Novell, SAP bring together security, compliance wares

Novell and SAP Tuesday announced a partnership to integrate, certify and support their respective security and identity technology and governance, risk and compliance software. In the next 30 days, that certification will extend to the other two applications in SAP's Business Objects governance, risk and compliance (GRC) suite - Process Control and Risk Management. "We cover the entire stack of GRC from applications to IT controls," says Ranga Bodla, senior director for governance, risk and compliance for SAP. The Novell software provides user provisioning, access control and security event monitoring, while the SAP tools address risk and access management, data monitoring and compliance management and reporting. Novell has integrated and certified its Novell Compliance Management Platform extension for SAP, Novell Identity Manager and Novell Sentinel to work with SAP's Business Objects GRC Access Control.

The two vendors hope the integration lets IT reduce costs and infrastructure by combining IT access controls and business process controls in a single integrated system. The companies also said they would optimize Novell's operating system for SAP's data center infrastructure. In essence, the two are creating a hub for defining security, identity and GRC across a network. "Users can synchronize across not only SAP applications but across all applications," says Jim Ebzery, senior vice president and general manager for identity and security at Novell. "So processes and policies in SAP Access Control can be mapped to another enterprise application with the same access controls tightly linked."The partnership between the two vendors http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/031708-novell-modular-infrastructu... ">began early last year when Novell also announced a partnership to optimize SAP on SuSE Linux Enterprise and with Novell's virtualization and identity platforms. Follow John on Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnfontana

Psystar selling software to run Mac OS on generic hardware

Oh, Psystar. We lov-well, we put up with you. We know you.

But still, you continue to let the dream of Mac cloning live on, EULAs, sketchy products, and pending trials be damned. This all sounds very familiar to us, as though it's based on a virtualization technology that Psystar's been trying to license. The company's latest invention is Rebel EFI, a product sold exclusively through Psystar's company store for the "special price" of $50. It claims to offer the ability to run up to six operating systems (including Mac OS X Snow Leopard) on six different hard drives on the same computer. Hmm. Psystar's Web site claims that Rebel EFI uses the company's very own Darwin Universal Boot Loader to load Mac OS X. It also comes with "supported hardware profile features and related drivers, and support for [Rebel EFI]". As for which drivers or hardware profile features Psystar's talking about, we cannot say.

Before you dive into this kludge of unsupported engineering, Psystar claims-through the use of legally-binding boldface-that it is "not responsible for possible data loss due to installation or use of Rebel EFI." Assuming that you're down with the idea of spending money on questionably legal software that could destroy anything (or everything!) on your computer, let us tell you what Psystar promises. Apart from a numbered list explaining how to install Snow Leopard on Rebel EFI, there's nothing on the Web site that explains what will work. Rebel EFI is being offered now for $50, down from the "regular" price of $90. A trial is available that will let you use Rebel EFI with limited functionality for up to two hours, but we honestly have no idea what will happen after two hours. [via The Loop] Besides in-app support, anybody brave enough to give Rebel EFI a try is really on their own.

13 hot products from DEMOfall '09

Network World's DEMO conference always features a wide range of flashy new consumer and enterprise technologies and this fall's show is no exception. In this article, we'll run through 13 of the new technologies generating the most buzz and highlight some of the innovations on display at the show. Products from DEMOfall '09 run the gamut, from cloud video surveillance technology to Web 2.0 patent databases to software that helps you scope out your dates for sketchy Internet activity. Get an overview of the products Company: Third Iris Corp.

The company's package includes video cameras that users can manage from a central Web site and that use "intelligent camera" software to provide analytics. Product: VIAAS With IT video surveillance becoming increasingly more complex, Third Iris Corp. has developed the Video Intelligence-as-a-Service (VIAAS) system that outsources analysis to the Third Iris cloud. Company: Armorize Technologies, Inc.  Product: Armorize HackAlert This software-as-a-service automatically scans Web Sites for injected malicious codes and links and also provides users with real-time alerts if their computers are visiting a site containing malware. Company: Intelius Product: DateCheck This is a mobile application that allows you to check up on your potential date any place where they have a presence on the Web. According to DEMO, this product has had success in Asian markets in recent years and is coming to the U.S. for the first time this year. So for instance, if you have their e-mail address or phone number and their e-mail address or phone number is linked to their Facebook and Twitter accounts you can check up on them to see if they are who they say they are or to find out if they have any sleazy interests.

The HP SkyRoom video conferencing service aims to change that by providing high-definition videoconferencing technology that HP says can support "up to four people using rich media content over standard business networks." DEMO says that while the system shouldn't be seen as a strict replacement for high-end conference room equipment, it does provide improvement for people working at individual stations who want to collaborate more easily on projects. The slogan that the company is using for the app is (we're not making this up): "Look up before you hook up." Company: Hewlett-Packard Product: HP SkyRoom If you want to participate in a video conference from your office computer, you typically have to use a puny Web camera that provides low resolution and high jitter. Company: Hashwork Product: Hashwork This is a sort of Twitter for your workplace that can integrate Google Calendar and Twitter to give workers a hub they can monitor throughout the day to see what their coworkers are up to. Company: dotSyntax, LLC Product: Digsby One annoying feature of having multiple accounts with different social networking and instant messaging protocols is the need to keep multiple windows open at once if you want to keep track of them all. The folks at DEMO claim that Hashwork has become a staple in their daily work environment.

Digsby is a program that aims to consolidate all these protocols by merging all instant messaging screen names onto one single messenger and by merging social networking sites to give real-time updates on all of them simultaneously. Company: Article One Partners, LLC  Product: AOP Patent Studies The goal of this technology is to apply Web 2.0 collaborative technology to the field of patent research. For instance, if you had accounts with MySpace, Twitter and Facebook, Digsby would serve as a one-stop hub that would tell you every time a friend wrote something on your wall or responded to your tweets. In other words, if you are a company looking to see if your patent claim will hold up in court, you can use AOP's community of patent advisors to help you out. The application is now available for the iPhone and it will let iPhone users sync with Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple iCal and Entourage for Macs. Article One says that it charges clients for an annual subscription that will give them "real-time access to validity evidence" and communication "with AOP's scientific community… to optimize their research."~~ Company: Tungle Corp.  Product: Tungle for iPhone Tungle, which debuted last year at DEMO, is a planning application that helps friends and coworkers share their calendars and create schedules for meetings based on availability.

Company: Waze, Inc.  Product: Waze Waze combines the open-source editing capabilities of Wikipedia with the real-time immediacy of Twitter to provide users with fast-breaking updates on traffic conditions. This technique can also be used to flag areas that have speeding cameras or areas that are well-known police speed traps. Essentially it works like this: If you're stuck in a traffic jam, you send an update explaining your location and the density of the current traffic. This mobile app is available on Android phones, the iPhone, RIM devices and Windows Mobile devices. Product: Micello We all love Google maps for helping us get from one place to another on the road.

Company: Micello, Inc. But what happens when we're inside a large building such as a stadium and we're looking for a particular restaurant or souvenir shop? This application supports user-generated maps of large public places that will eventually help you find a public restroom no matter where you are. That's where Micello comes in. Company: Piryx, Inc.  Product: Piryx Think of Piryx as sort of a PayPal for politics.

DEMO praises the Piryx platform for bringing "smart payment processing technology to the $300+ billion non-profit sector." Company: Answers Corp. It essentially lets users send contributions to political candidates, action committees and non-profit groups. Product: Answers.com Answers Corp, which already maintains the popular WikiAnswers, is launching this new Web site as a way to provide "one-stop answers about anything, combining the world's best licensed and user-generated content." The site will incorporate similar features to WikiAnswers, where users ask questions and rely upon a team of open-source writers and editors to answer them. Product: Symform Cooperative Storage Cloud This is new approach to cloud storage that Symform describes as a "storage potluck." When users sign up for the Cooperative Storage Cloud, they can get as much storage space as they want within the cloud as long as they contribute an equal amount of storage space on their own premises for Symform to use as storage for other customers. DEMO says that the new site's strength is that it integrates "the depth of ReferenceAnswers with the breadth of WikiAnswers." Company: Symform, Inc. As Kevin Brown, the vice president of sales and marketing for Symform, explains it, the customer "contributes what they consume." So for example, Brown says that a customer "can contribute from an internal drive or some external drive, e.g., a $100 USB drive, and backup an unlimited amount." This cooperative approach to storage makes Symform's cloud storage cheaper than other kinds of cloud storage.

Lawyer in Tenenbaum music piracy case to seek retrial

The Harvard Law School professor who defended a Boston University doctoral student in a music piracy case plans to seek a new trial. A hearing on the motions is scheduled for Jan. 4. Nesson plans to argue that Tenenbaum's file-sharing activities occurred before digital music could be purchased legally in MP3 format. Charles Nesson, a law professor and the founder of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, said he is also filing a separate motion challenging the constitutionality of the $675,000 fine assessed against Joel Tenenbaum and asking that it be reduced to a more reasonable amount. He pointed to remarks made by U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Gertner in her decision yesterday that he said supported such an argument.

In her remarks, Gertner noted that individuals "who used new file-sharing networks in the technological interregnum before digital media could be purchased legally, but who later shifted to paid outlets," might be able to use a fair-use defense. Gertner signed off on a $675,000 fine against Tenenbaum, who was found liable for illegally downloading and sharing 30 copyrighted songs in a lawsuit brought by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which represents the major music labels. In her decision, Gertner wrote that the court might have been willing to hear the "fair use" defense asserted by Nesson had it been presented in a proper manner. If Nesson had tailored his defense to suggest a "modest exemption" to copyright protections, the court would have been willing to entertain the defense, Gertner noted. Gertner said she had to forbid Nesson from presenting a fair-use defense in the case because the manner in which it was presented to the court was too broad and vague.

As an example of such an exemption, Gertner wrote that individuals who had used new file-sharing networks in the "technological interregnum" before legal paid music downloads were available might be able to rely on a fair-use defense, if they had later started paying for such downloads. The key question is, when did that period come to an end?" he said. The fair use doctrine allows for the use of copyrighted material without permission from the rights holders in certain limited circumstances. "Her opinion on their being an interregnum between when Napster came online and the time the industry finally responded," with legal MP3 music downloads is interesting, Nesson said in an interview with Computerworld . The comments suggest that Gertner recognizes many Napster users might have had a legitimate fair use, Nesson said. "She has established the foundation by recognizing this interregnum period. Nesson said he will also use Gertner's refusal to permit the fair-use defense in the case and other "major evidentiary errors" as a basis for seeking a new trial. Her refusal resulted in the jury walking away with a false impression of Tenenbaum's commitment to settling the case, Nesson claimed.

One example of such an error was the judge's refusal to allow the jury to see the entire contents of a letter Tenenbaum had written to the RIAA offering them $500 by way of a settlement, Nesson said. Nesson said he will also argue that the copyright statutes used in the case were not meant to be used against individuals, but against commercial enterprises that break copyright laws. "We will be asserting the unconstitutionality of applying these bankrupting damages to individual persons like Joel," Nesson said. Nesson's tactics in the case have previously drawn fire from other legal experts. How successful such arguments are likely to be remains to be seen. Some had predicted that his assertion of a fair-use defense would fail, well before Gertner threw it out.

Gertner, in her decision yesterday, criticized Nesson's behavior and called his use of the fair-use defense an "afterthought" that he came up with "literally on the eve of trial." "Defense counsel repeatedly missed deadlines, ignored rules, engaged in litigation over conduct that was plainly illegal," Gertner wrote in explaining some of the reasoning behind her decision to forbid the fair use defense in the Tenenbaum case. Others questioned his decision to challenge the constitutionality of the statutes under which Tenenbaum was sued. Nesson, however, brushed aside the judge's criticism and maintained that it was she who had gotten it wrong. "I was sorry she did not respond to our fair use defense. Gertner in her decision also said she was concerned with "astronomical penalties" available to music companies under copyright laws, She called upon Congress to amend copyright statutes to reflect the realities of file-sharing among students. She had a considerable amount of trouble rejecting it," he said.

Dell-Perot deal: Big price tag, small industry impact

Dell's bid for outsourcer Perot Systems marks a significant move for the hardware vendor, but industry watchers say the pending acquisition won't do much to alter the current IT services market. The deal marks a very deliberate strategy from Dell to add IT services expertise to its mostly products business, industry watchers say. "Dell has been a bit more gradual embarking on its services strategy, but it has been very deliberate in determining who is the right player at the right time," says Dane Anderson, research vice president at Gartner. "Perot offers something that can be complementary to the Dell business and at the same time, it is very digestible and integrate-able." Slideshow: Recapping the hottest tech M&A deals of 2009 Perot, which is already a Dell partner and delivered a healthcare solution based on a Dell platform earlier this year, does business just shy of $3 billion, according to Anderson. Dell buying Perot Systems for $3.9 billion Dell Monday announced it would pay $3.9 billion to acquire existing partner and IT services provider Perot Systems.

A deal would enable Dell to sell products into Perot accounts and vice versa. For one, Dell needs to maintain its foothold in the small and midsize enterprise market and not yet attempt to become an "anywhere, anytime global services provider," Anderson says. "This deal increases Dell's footprint, but it doesn't give them a license to play anywhere. If the two companies can stay focused, analysts say, the opportunity for a successful integration is large. They have to be selective and disciplined about the markets the combined company addresses." That means Dell could excel in vertical markets such as healthcare and government, considering Perot's strong history in both areas. The acquisition will impact Dell and Perot and their customers, and it is interesting, but it's not game-changing for the industry." Others say the deal represents an aggressive move on Dell's part that impacts both the hardware and IT services market, and vendors such as HP and IBM specifically.  HP and IBM have long been able to couple their product offerings with professional services, and HP recently upped the ante by acquiring EDS. Dell being a pure-play hardware vendor with partnerships in software and services wasn't able to effectively compete with the market-leading services vendors. Industry watchers say with proper execution the acquisition could be the beginning of Dell expanding beyond being a product maker to becoming a provider of IT services, which would benefit both companies involved in the pending deal. "Perot Systems is a conglomerate of goods and services outside the scope of IT. This acquisition is a first step in Dell's long-held desire to provide more than just desktop solutions," says Steve Brasen, principal analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. "Leveraging Perot's broad market base, however, Dell will likely find direct marketing opportunities to expand its core IT business – particularly among government, financial and healthcare institutions." Dell is planning to keep the leadership team at Perot in place, which could bode well for the success of the acquisition, says Mark Mayo, partner and president of global resources management at TPI. But aside from the deal representing a trend toward consolidation in the IT services market, Mayo doesn't see the final acquisition as having a big impact on the competition or the market in general. "We expect to see more consolidation because it is a very competitive market and a surge of new players came into the market globally in the late 1990s and early 2000s," Mayo explains. "But this is not an industry-leading or industry-making event.

Now with Perot's services business, Dell is on track to better compete with the likes of Accenture, CSC, HP and IBM, analysts say. "Perot and Dell together are able to compete with HP and IBM, specifically, in ways that neither was able to before. Dell was on a losing path as a pure-play hardware vendor," says Andi Mann, vice president of research at Enterprise Management Associates. HP and IBM (and to a lesser extent Sun) have been able to offer a complete data center infrastructure - from facilities, through server and storage hardware, to software, and implementation and operational services – for some time. Acquiring an IT services arm will help Dell better compete and expand into new markets, but it won't be enough to enable it to fully compete head-on with the likes of HP and IBM, Mann adds. "If Dell really wants to compete on even footing with HP and IBM, it is going to need a software stack of its own. Do you Tweet? It can continue to cede solution revenues to its partners for some time, and this buy will cause significant indigestion and inertia that will hold up any new acquisition, but eventually Dell must pick up a software stack," Mann says.

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GlobalFoundries woos customers with expansion plans

The acquisition of Chartered Semiconductor by Advanced Technology Investment Co. (ATIC) and its planned integration with GlobalFoundries will help the contract chip maker win more customers, GlobalFoundries CEO Doug Grose said Wednesday. "This enhances our ability to then service a much broader and deeper range of customers" Grose said during a presentation at Advanced Micro Devices' 2009 Analyst Day. The company is a joint venture between AMD and ATIC and the microprocessor vendor remains its biggest customer. GlobalFoundries, formerly the manufacturing arm of AMD, was spun off as an independent company and began operating on its own earlier this year. In September, ATIC offered to acquire Singapore's Chartered Semiconductor, which uses the same manufacturing process technology as GlobalFoundries.

Besides adding manufacturing capacity through ATIC's acquisition of Chartered and the construction of a new plant in New York, GlobalFoundries is counting on advanced process technologies to help it win customers and compete with rivals like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Nearly all of GlobalFoundries' current production uses its 45-nanometer process, reflecting AMD's role as the company's dominant customer, Grose said, adding that the more advanced 32 nanometer process is in pilot production and is "ready to go" next year. Chartered shareholders voted to approve the deal earlier this month. "We have one more regulatory approval to get in the world and we're working towards year end to close this ... and to do the planning to integrate, on an operational basis, Chartered and Global Foundries into a single face to the customer," Grose said. GlobalFoundries has also started pilot production using its 28-nanometer process technology, which will be used for commercial production starting late next year.

Intel, Numonyx create breakthrough in phase-change memory

Intel Corp. and Numonyx B.V. announced a breakthrough in the development of phase-change memory today that has the potential to allow developers to stack multiple layers of chips atop each other, thereby greatly increasing the density of the nonvolatile memory medium. Greg Atwood, a senior technology fellow at Numonyx, said the breakthrough in stackable PCM, which is being called PCM-stackable (PCMS), has the potential to create products that can replace DRAM, NOR and NAND flash memory because it will have better bandwidth, greater density and a cost per gigabyte of capacity comparable with today's solid state disk (SSD) drive products. "We believe it enables the possibility of combining the functionality and performance of phase-change memory with more NAND-like cost structure," Atwood said. "And, it's of particular interest given the challenges the existing non-volatile memory technologies are facing over the next decade as well as the continued expansion of [PCM] usage." The two companies have been working on development of PCM products since 2000, and a stackable PCM product since 2002. Al Fazio, an Intel fellow and director of memory technology development, said it's not unusual for a new memory type to take as many as 10 years to develop. Calling the discovery a "milestone" in phase-change memory (PCM) development, the researchers said they have so far only been able to build a single-layer, 64Mbit chip with the potential to be stacked with other 64Mbit chips.

Atwood said that because the stacking breakthrough builds on top of PCM, a technology already in production, "it's a leading candidate amongst the various stackable memory concepts, most of which have no basis in a proven technology." Other non-volatile memories in development include graphite memory , and race track memory . Atwood added that Intel and Numonyx have no current time line for bringing PCMS products to market. Current NAND flash memory lithography technology resides at the 32-nanometer level. Phase-change memory is made up of a glass-like material called chalcogenide that can be can be switched between a crystalline and random state using very low-voltage electricity. Future roadmaps scale NAND flash to 20 nanometers, but physical limitations present a barrier to creating anything more dense than that. The structure of a typical non-volatile memory cell includes a storage element combined with a selector element. PCM, however, currently has the ability to scale to 5 nanometers in size, and the potential of even greater densities, Fazio said.

The function of the storage element is nonvolatile storage of data and the purpose of the selector element is to connect storage elements into a cross-point array of cells. Unlike NAND flash memory, which requires a entire block of memory cells to be rewritten each time new data is stored on a device like a SSD drive, PCM allows for single bits to be changed, greatly increasing the efficiency and performance of a device. "It has features of a low-latency memory and high bandwidth so we can combine many of the good attributes ... of NAND flash, DRAM and NOR flash," Fazio said. The connection allows for the selection of a single storage element inside of a large array of cells - a billion or more. The breakthrough in stacking PCMS came with the use of a thin film selector substance that is in the same class of materials as chalcogenide and is built above the silicon substrate. It has a low current in the off state and a high current in the on state," Atwood said. "Combining the OTS with the thin film storage material, a similar material used in phase-change memories today, enables a cell that can be stacked multiple layers high." Additionally, since the silicon substrate that isn't being used as a selector, as it is in today's PCM product, can now be used for building the support circuitry used that's required to decode, read and write to the cells. "So the combination of these two advantages results in a much smaller die size that's a lower potential cost structure for the memory," Atwood said. The companies are calling the thin film selector an Ovonic Threshold Switch (OTS), which acts like a resister between the stacked layers of PCM chips. "This switch demonstrates a diode-like behavior.

On Dec. 9, the two companies plan to present a paper on their discovery at the 2009 International Electron Devices Meeting, titled "A Stackable Cross Point Phase Change Memory."

Apple probes iPhone battery woes

Continued complaints by iPhone owners about fast-draining batteries have prompted Apple to ask some users to install power-logging software on their smartphones in an effort to diagnose the problem, according to messages on the company's support forum. "Some of you may already have been informed via e-mail [by Apple], but for those of you that haven't, I can assure you that Apple is trying to get to the bottom of this problem," said a user identified as "mikefradette" Friday on a support thread dedicated to poor battery performance. "Let's just say they have selected a beta group to help solve this issue." Others reported that technical support representatives had asked them to install Apple software that logs application usage and power consumption. I'd bet that Apple missed some key interactions between the iPhone's software and the processor in the last update that causes it to over-utilize the CPU, especially since [the complaints] came after the software update." Vronko was referring to the iPhone 3.1 update that Apple shipped two weeks ago. Apple technical support has also used an 11-item questionnaire in its discussions with users in an attempt to figure out the cause of rapid battery drain, including questions are about Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and e-mail use. "There's still no smoking gun," said Aaron Vronko, the CEO of Michigan-based Rapid Repair, an iPhone repair shop. "But the processor in the iPhone 3GS can use 50% more power in some situations than its predecessor. Most of the users grousing on the Apple support forum who identified their iPhone's model said they were using the 3GS, although some said they had seen battery life drop off on their iPhone 3G smartphones as well.

The clamor grew even louder after users installed iPhone 3.1, and shows no sign of abating. In fact, complaints about battery consumption started in June, when "http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135181/iPhone_users_harangue_Apple_over_battery_life?">Apple rolled out the iPhone 3.0 software. One thread on the topic, which debuted Sept. 10, has more than 570 individual posts, and has been read by over 40,000 people, an extremely high number for Apple's forum. "I'm glad this is an actual problem. I have to charge the iPhone in the middle of the day to be able to have enough battery to get home," added "help with iPhone." "Same problem here," reported "cathjock12345" on the same thread Monday. "The battery was completely drained after about 1 hour of Internet use, 10 text messages, and 2 quick (5 minute-ish) phone calls over the course of 5 hours. I thought I was just going crazy," said "iPhil" Monday afternoon on that well-trafficked thread. "After [iPhone] 3.1, battery sometimes doesn't even last an entire day with no additional talk than I had using 3.0." "The day after I installed the 3.1 firmware, everything changed.

Unacceptable." "I think this is exactly the kind of thing you'd see from an unexpected software interaction with the processor," argued Vronko today. But Apple's doing the right thing by asking iPhone owners how they're using their smartphones, and requesting that some install logging software. "Some of these [people] are probably heavy application users, though they may think they're light users," said Vronko. "But [the logging software] is likely looking not just at the applications being used and the power consumption, but recording down to the last processing thread what's occurring." Vronko was optimistic that Apple would get to the root of the problem. "Diagnostics like that should make it pretty easy for them to narrow it down," he said.

Hacker leaks thousands of Hotmail passwords, says site

More than 10,000 usernames and passwords for Windows Live Hotmail accounts were leaked online late last week, according to a report by Neowin.net , which claimed that they were posted by an anonymous user on pastebin.com last Thursday. Neowin reported that it had seen part of the list. "Neowin has seen part of the list posted and can confirm the accounts are genuine and most appear to be based in Europe," said the site. "The list details over 10,000 accounts starting from A through to B, suggesting there could be additional lists." Hotmail usernames and passwords are often used for more than logging into Microsoft 's online e-mail service, however. The post has since been taken down. Many people log onto a wide range of Microsoft's online properties - including the trial version of the company's Web-based Office applications , the Connect beta test site and the Skydrive online storage service - with their Hotmail passwords.

Accounts with domains of @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com were included in the list. It was unknown how the usernames and passwords were obtained, but Neowin speculated that they were the result of either a hack of Hotmail or a massive phishing attack that had tricked users into divulging their log-on information. Microsoft representatives in the U.S. were not immediately able to confirm Neowin's account, or answer questions, including how the usernames and passwords were acquired. Last year, a Tennessee college student was accused of breaking into former Alaska governor Sarah Palin's Yahoo Mail account in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election. The BBC , however, reported early Monday that Microsoft U.K. is aware of the report that account information had been available on the Web, and said it's "actively investigating the situation and will take appropriate steps as rapidly as possible." If Neowin's account is accurate, the Hotmail hack or phishing attack would be one of the largest suffered by a Web-based e-mail service.

Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee at the time, lost control of her personal account when someone identified only as "rubico" reset her password after guessing answers to several security questions. Kernell's case is ongoing. David Kernell was charged with a single count of accessing a computer without authorization by a federal grand jury last October. Shortly after the Palin account hijack, Computerworld confirmed that the automated password-reset mechanisms used by Hotmail, Yahoo Mail and Google 's Gmail could be abused by anyone who knew an account's username and could answer a single security question.

Juniper's relationship with Packet Design

In our Oct. 26 WAN newsletter we discussed the fact that there were a number of rumors circulating about a dramatic move that Juniper would soon announce. We are going to use this newsletter to focus on one piece of the Juniper announcements – Juniper's establishment of a close relationship with Packet Design. On Oct. 29 Juniper used the New York stock exchange as a backdrop to make a series of announcements.

Juniper Networks: a brief history In the Oct. 26 newsletter we pointed out that the most common rumor we were hearing was that Juniper would acquire Riverbed. We stated, for example, that although Riverbed certainly does sell into service providers, it is primarily a fast moving enterprise-focused company. In that newsletter we stated that for a number of reasons we didn't believe that Juniper would acquire Riverbed. In contrast, Juniper's DNA is clearly in the service-provider market. As part of their announcement, however, Juniper also announced that it will offer a development platform referred to as Junos Space.

Part of the agreement that Juniper announced with Packet Design is the standard OEM relationship by which Juniper's direct sales and distribution partners will sell Packet Design's route analytics products. Packet Design's Route Analyzer product will be one of the first solutions that resides in Junos Space. That follows because Packet Design's route analytics product are targeted at some of the challenges that occur in large complex networks – both enterprise and service provider. Unlike the rumored acquisition of Riverbed, Juniper's recently announced relationship with Packet Design makes a lot of sense. For example, one of the functions of Packet Design's route analytics products is to enable IT professionals to accurately model network changes before implementing them.

In order to do this, a route analytics solution has to have an understanding of precisely how IP networks deliver application traffic. Another function of these products is to provide visibility, analysis and diagnosis of the issues that occur at the routing layer. This requires continuous, real-time monitoring as well as the creation and maintenance of a map of networkwide routes and of all the IP traffic flows that traverse these routes. We said that this relationship makes a lot of sense in part because networks are continually getting more complex, Packet Design's route analytics products help manage that complexity and Juniper definitely understands large complex networks. This in turn means that a route analytics solution must be able to record every change in the traffic paths as controlled and notified by IP routing protocols. The Juniper announcements are interesting in part because they show that in spite of appearances, that there is a lot of innovation happening in networking.

The panel is entitled "Breakthrough Network Technologies". If you are going to be at the conference, try to attend the panel as it should be very insightful. To reinforce that concept, Packet Design will be on one of Jim's panels at the forthcoming Interop conference in New York.

Microsoft to patch IE zero-day bug next week

Microsoft today said it will deliver six security updates on Tuesday, including one that will patch a vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) the company admitted only last week. The update will address an IE zero-day vulnerability that Microsoft confirmed Nov. 23 in a security advisory. "I want to point out that Internet Explorer 8 is not affected on any platform and that running Protected Mode in Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista mitigates this issue," said Jerry Bryant, a spokesman for the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC), in a blog post announcing the advisory last week. The updates will patch a total of 12 flaws in Windows, IE and Microsoft Office, the company said in a follow-up entry to its security response center's blog . At the top of the patch list, even Microsoft's own, will be an update for IE 5.01, IE6, IE7 and IE8 that has been pegged as "critical," the firm's highest severity rating in its four-step scoring system.

Microsoft's advisory was its reaction to proof-of-concept attack code that had gone public several days before, when it was posted to the popular Bugtraq security mailing list. Next Tuesday's update, however, will quash bugs in all still-supported versions of IE, not just IE6 and IE7, a fact Microsoft confirmed today . "We want to make customers aware that we will be addressing the vulnerability discussed in Security Advisory 977981 in the IE bulletin on Tuesday," Bryant said in another blog post. The sample code exploited a flaw in IE's layout parser, and could be used to hijack fully-patched Windows machines. The advisory Bryant called out was the one Microsoft issued last week. "We know that customers are concerned about this issue and we are also aware that Proof of Concept (PoC) code is available publicly." Microsoft's advance notification spelled out the significance of the problem with IE: All versions of its browser contain one or more flaws when run on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and even Windows 7. Only the company's newest server products - Server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 - are somewhat safer. Microsoft confirmed to Storms that the IE update contains fixes for multiple vulnerabilities; it's not unusual for Microsoft to quash several bugs in a single update. "Last week's zero-day is still not applicable to IE8," Storms said after he consulted with MSRC. "Some other bug is also being patched in the same bulletin." The attack code that went public Nov. 20 was not only unreliable, according to security experts who dived into the exploit, but was touted as only affecting IE6 and IE7 on Windows XP. Later, Microsoft said that Vista users would be protected to a degree not enjoyed by XP customers because the former's "sandbox" would limit the ability of the exploit to compromise the PC. Most outside security researchers, including Storms, were pessimistic last week when asked whether Microsoft could scramble fast enough to fix the flaw in IE6 and IE7. Today, he was impressed. "I would have wavered last week [on] whether they would fix it," he admitted. "But given the impact [of the vulnerability] and the fact that there's code out there, I'm not surprised that they managed it." Other updates slated for release on Dec. 8 include patches for bugs in Windows; Office 2000 and Office 2003; and Microsoft Project 2000, 2002 and 2003. Three of the six updates will be tagged critical, while the remaining trio will carry the "important" label. "Frankly, the rest don't matter at this point," said Storms, referring to the non-IE updates. "IE is the top of the news for Microsoft today, and will be next week." The bright spot, said Storms, is that Microsoft keeps ladling more information onto its pre-Patch Tuesday notification , a preview customers rely on to plan their patching strategy for the following week. "They're blogging and telling us the number of vulnerabilities and the [affected] applications now, which is great," Storms said, applauding Microsoft's moves. "They continue to increase the amount of information they provide. However, that doesn't mean IE 5.01 and IE8 are suddenly vulnerable to last week's zero-day exploit, said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security.

They're setting a real trend here." Microsoft will release the six updates at approximately 1 p.m. ET on Dec. 8.

Chip sales to grow in 2010, iSuppli says

Worldwide semiconductor sales will grow in 2010 as chip sales gain steam in response to stabilizing economies, analyst firm iSuppli said on Wednesday. Chip sales could total $282.7 billion in 2012; sales tallied close to $273.4 billion in 2007. However, global chip sales will decline in 2009, albeit at a lower rate than iSuppli first projected. Semiconductor sales could grow by 13.8 percent on a year-over-year basis to reach US$246 billion in 2010. Chip revenue will keep growing through 2012 and could reach levels of 2007, after which chip revenue skid began. The analyst firm predicted year-over-year global chip sales would decline by 16.5 percent in 2009. Earlier in the year, iSuppli projected a 23 percent drop.

Semiconductor sales and inventory levels in the PC and mobile-handset markets - which account for a majority of semiconductor sales - improved in the second quarter, iSuppli said. Chip sales in 2009 will total US$216 billion, compared to $258 billion in 2008. Chip sales have "gained clarity" as economies stabilize and supplies improve in key markets after an unstable first quarter, iSuppli said in a statement. Major vendors have also increased their outlooks for PC and mobile-handset sales, which has given more clarity to project overall chip sales for the year. "Semiconductor shipments rebounded as inventories were replenished and modest forward-looking purchases were made," said Dale Ford, senior vice president, market intelligence services for iSuppli, in a statement. Otellini's comments were stronger than conservative outlooks provided for an expected PC industry recovery from companies like Advanced Micro Devices and Dell earlier in the year. Intel CEO Paul Otellini last week said that its chip shipments were stabilizing as PC shipments start to take off.

The companies said that PC shipments would grow as users look to buy new PCs with Microsoft's upcoming Windows 7 OS, which is due next month, and as companies look to refresh PCs. The global economy was partly boosted in the second quarter by worldwide economic stimulus efforts, especially in China, iSuppli said. The U.S. stimulus effort - the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - has a lesser effect as it wasn't implemented on a wide basis, iSuppli said. China's stimulus efforts resulted in a massive increase in consumer purchasing, which benefitted worldwide economic conditions, iSuppli said. An economic stimulus package of $787 billion to spur economic activity was passed in February by Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama.

US lawmakers question ICANN gTLD plan

Several U.S. lawmakers urged the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to back off on a plan to offer an unlimited number of new generic top-level domains until concerns about trademark protections and other issues can be addressed. You guys made us come here today." The board at ICANN, the nonprofit organization created in 1998 to oversee the Internet's domain name system, voted in June 2008 to move toward unlimited gTLDs, in addition to the 21 gTLDs available now, including .com, .biz, and .info. Members of a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee on Wednesday questioned ICANN Chief Operating Officer Doug Brent about why the organization continues to move forward with its plan to sell new generic top-level domains, or gTLDs. Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat, complained that ICANN hasn't been able to resolve complaints about its plan to sell new gTLDs to compete with .com, .org and other current TLDs. "This is a hearing we shouldn't have had to call," Conyers said. "If the parties had come together, I doubt if we'd be here this morning.

Under the ICANN plan, anyone could apply for a new gTLD - some suggested have been .food, .basketball and .eco - at a cost of about US$100,000. Asked by lawmakers how soon ICANN planned to offer new gTLDs, Brent said he wasn't sure. Critics of the TLD expansion, including Hewlett-Packard and Dell, have complained that a huge expansion of gTLDs would force trademark owners to buy multiple domains on each new gTLD, potentially costing them and their customers billions of dollars. ICANN had originally planned to offer them this year, but the latest estimate is February, and Brent said he expects that deadline to slip as ICANN works with critics to resolve issues. This week, the Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse (CADNA), an organization with 19 large-business members, called on the U.S. government to conduct a "full-scale" audit of ICANN. "ICANN has not properly vetted this decision in an objective fashion," CADNA said. "This rollout expands the size of the Internet exponentially without first performing a sound cost/benefit and security and risk analysis to determine both desirability among and risk to Internet users." At the Wednesday hearing, Conyers seemed to connect the gTLD disagreements with the end of an oversight agreement ICANN has with the U.S. Department of Commerce. A spokesman for Conyers wasn't immediately available to clarify his comment.

ICANN's long-standing formal relationship with the U.S. government ends Sept. 30. "If you don't meet the 30th deadline, you're going to all be sorry that you didn't make it," Conyers said. ICANN's Brent defended the organization's decision to move forward with new gTLDs. Internet users, including the U.S. government, have long called for new TLDs, he said. Winners of new gTLDs will have to abide by a lengthy set of rules, he said. "ICANN did not casually think this plan up," Brent added. "This will not be an unbridled expansion. In addition, the expansion of TLDs would allow Internet users who don't use the Roman alphabet to have domain names in their native languages, he noted. It is the work of many hands from a bottom-up process." Representative Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, questioned whether ICANN had enough resources to enforce strong trademark protections and other rules in the new gTLDs. He asked if ICANN saw that there were still "a lot of things that need to be worked out here." "We might question 'a lot,' but I think, absolutely we have more work to do," Brent answered.

Instead, we should address these concerns." But Steve DelBianco, executive director of e-commerce trade group NetChoice, suggested the new gTLDs are little more than an effort to create new labels, when ICANN has more important issues to work on. "Every day our industry and my members create new applications, Web sites and services," he said. "Labels are just one of the ways people find these new services. Despite the continued concerns, Paul Stahura, CEO and president of domain-name registrar eNom, said the ICANN plan will lead to more competition among domain-name registries. "There is high consumer demand for many new gTLDs," he said. "There currently is little or no competition to satisfy this demand, and ... we shouldn't prohibit competition because of trademark concerns. The label is not the creation, it's just something we stick on it." One proposed gTLD is .food, he said. "Dot-food won't create a single new restaurant," DelBianco said. "It won't create a new Web page, it won't create new restaurant reviews or online reservation sites."

Lawsuits over Heartland data breach folded into one

A lawsuit consolidating 16 separate class-action complaints brought by financial institutions against Heartland Payment Systems Inc. has been filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. The complaints allege that the payment processor was negligent in its duty to protect card holder data. The claims stem from the massive data breach disclosed by Princeton, N.J.-based Heartland in January. The amended complaint includes for the first time several statements that Heartland is alleged to have made regarding the controls it had in place to protect credit and debit card data just prior to the breach.

The lawsuit seeks compensation from Heartland for the costs that the financial institutions say they've had to bear in notifying customers about the breach and in reissuing new payment cards. The fact that the company suffered the breach despite its claimed security measures shows that Heartland either negligently or deliberately misrepresented the facts, the lawsuit alleged. Among the financial institutions listed are the Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union, Lone Star Bank of North America and Amalgamated Bank of New York. "There were multiple lawsuits filed all over the country on behalf of financial institutions, and all of those cases were sent to federal court in Houston" for consolidation, said Joseph Sauder, an attorney with Chimicles & Tikellis LLP. The Haverford, Penn.-based law firm is representing some of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. "This complaint incorporates the strongest claims from all of the financial institution class-action lawsuits," Sauder said. "The next step is for Heartland to file a response to this complaint," he said. The breach, which is considered the biggest involving payment card data, compromised more than 100 million credit and debit cards. Heartland on Jan. 20 disclosed that unknown intruders had broken into its network sometime last year and accessed payment card data belonging to an undisclosed number of customers.

So far, Heartland has publicly admitted to spending nearly $13 million on breach-related costs, and analysts expect it will cost the company millions more in the coming years. The cases were consolidated in federal court in Texas because Heartland's data centers are located in that state, Sauder said. Heartland, one of the biggest payment processors in the U.S., manages about 100 million credit and debit-card transactions per month. A "separate track" of cases involving consumer lawsuits against Heartland is also being heard in the same court, Sauder said. BJ's Wholesale Club, Hannaford Bros. and Dave & Buster's restaurant chain. In September, Albert Gonzalez, 28, of Miami pleaded guilty to the data heist at Heartland and several other retailers, including TJX Companies Inc.

Gonzalez is scheduled to be sentenced in December and faces 15 to 20 years in prison under the terms of his plea agreement. Heartland did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Win 7 Launch: Early Adopters Eager to Bid Farewell to XP

At the Windows 7 launch in downtown Manhattan, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer unveiled the general availability of Windows 7 with his usual enthusiasm, emphasizing ease of use, faster boot up times and the ability to bring together the PC and the television. Consumers. Ballmer drum-beating aside, Windows 7 has garnered some of the best reviews of any version of the OS. With user interface and networking features that are both slick and useful, and an army of hardware makers lined up with special deals on everything from netbooks to high-end gaming PCs running Windows 7, the setting seems ripe for consumers to upgrade or buy a new computer.

Check. Yet despite the testing, planning and time-consuming complexities of an enterprise OS upgrade, corporate customers at the Windows 7 launch interviewed for this story are hankering to deploy Windows 7 in their environments. [ For complete coverage on Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system - including hands-on reviews, video tutorials and advice on enterprise rollouts - see CIO.com's Windows 7 Bible. ] Early adopters from different lines of business and at different stages of migration agree on three points: Windows XP has had its day; Vista was never worth it; and Windows 7 offers businesses too many security, networking and navigation features to ignore. Enterprises, on the other hand, are a more complicated bunch. XP Couldn't Last Forever Holland America Line, a Seattle-based cruise ship company with a fleet that travels all over the world, has been aggressively testing Windows 7 as part of a migration from Windows XP for its 3,900 PCs across 14 cruise ships. Though only 20 machines run Windows 7 right now, IT manager Phil Norman says that a year from now he plans to have 50 percent of all machines at Holland America Line running Windows 7. "We tested Vista with a small group, but there were too many application compatibility issues. Application managers in the company's IT and finance departments have been testing Windows 7 for application compatibility for about a year.

The benefit just wasn't there," says Norman, adding that Windows 7 is a "much more usable operating system, with better security features." Norman gives kudos to Windows XP for being a very stable and easy OS to maintain. "But only to a certain extent," he says. "More and more we're relying on third party vendors with XP, and it can't handle newer drivers." Yes, Windows 7 Can Save You Money Del Monte Foods, a San Francisco-based food production and distribution company that sells canned fruits and vegetables as well as pet foods, is at a similar stage in their Windows 7 deployment as Holland America Line, with 45 out of its 3,000 total business users running Windows 7 on their machines. The company skipped Vista because it was "cumbersome, hard to use and had too many compatibility issues," says David Glenn, Del Monte's director of enterprise operations. The other users run Windows XP. Del Monte plans to have Windows 7 on 1,000 machines within a year. Even though migrating from XP to Windows 7 is estimated to cost $1,035 to $1,930 per user, according to research firm Gartner, Glenn is confident that Windows 7 will ultimately save money for Del Monte. "The new Windows 7 hardware coming out is less expensive than hardware in XP's days," he says. "Also, Windows 7 is a lot easier to use, so our training and support costs will go down. One good example is connecting to a printer is so much easier with Windows 7," he says.

Glenn adds that because Microsoft is pushing Windows 7 in the home market, Del Monte will encourage employees to upgrade on their home machines. "There's a lot of functionality in Windows 7 they can learn at home and bring with them to work. Virtualize Those Apps Migrating to Windows 7 has been made smoother for both Holland America Line and Del Monte by using MDOP (Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack), a suite of add-on applications available to members of Microsoft's Software Assurance program that help manage a network of PCs. Both companies are using the Application Virtualization feature of MDOP, called App-V, to virtualize applications and make them available to Windows 7 users even if those apps are not compatible with Windows 7. "It's a temporary fix while application vendors get compatible and it will help speed up our deployments to Windows 7," says Glenn. Al Gillen, a VP at research firm IDC, offered a reminder that not all enterprises are so gung ho about Windows 7 adoption. Windows 7: A Security Savior? But, he adds, there is a solid case for businesses to move on. "Mainstream support for XP has ended and that could become a liability for companies," says Gillen.

McBeth is in the process of testing and slowly migrating Starwood's 160 hotels (including the Sheraton and Westin brands) to Windows 7. With many different employees accessing the same computers at front desks, security poses a big concern. "Like most companies, we deal with external and internal security policies," says McBeth. "Any security breach and we are subject to fines, audits and bad PR. So obviously we want more security features in the OS, and Windows 7 provides that." Specifically, McBeth highlights the built-in security features of Internet Explorer 8, as well as AppLocker, a Windows 7 feature that protect users from running unauthorized software that could lead to malware infections, and BitLocker to Go, an encryption feature that protects the data on external hard drives and USB thumb drives. Mark McBeth, VP of IT at Starwood Hotels, has security on his mind as well. Norman of Holland America echoes the need to have security features baked into the OS. "In our industry there's lots of compliance. With XP, we have resorted to using third party security vendors and there have been compatibility problems along the way." A New Day for Microsoft IDC's Gillen says that every company's Windows 7 adoption experience will be different. "Like any OS upgrade, there will be early adopters, and there will be late adopters," he says. Our ships are basically floating cities," he says. "Windows 7 meets security needs better. But with positive reviews and a solid launch, Windows 7 could mark a new beginning for Microsoft, Gillen says. "Microsoft got a lot of criticism over Vista.

Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/smoneill. This is a chance to rewrite the gamebook for both consumers and businesses." Shane O'Neill is a senior writer at CIO.com. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter at twitter.com/CIOonline.

Microsoft pushes switchover deal for CRM Online

Microsoft is trying to steal away Salesforce.com and Oracle CRM on Demand customers with a new offer that will provide them with six months' access to its own CRM Online application at no charge if they sign a 12-month contract. That compares to $65 per month per user for Salesforce.com Professional. Microsoft charges US$44 per month per user for CRM Online Professional edition. Oracle CRM on Demand pricing starts at $70 per month per user.

Microsoft will consider expanding access to customers of other CRM products once it sees how well the program is received, Wilson said. Meanwhile, Microsoft's application is comparable from a feature standpoint and "already about 35 percent cheaper" than the competition, said Brad Wilson, general manager of Dynamics CRM. The six-month offer is valid through the end of this year. Six months is about how long it takes a customer to know for sure whether an application is right for their business, said Ray Wang, partner with the analyst firm Altimeter Group. For one thing, a customer and Oracle or Salesforce.com may have a year-to-year deal, which might still be in effect when the six-month trial period expires, Wang said. But potential hurdles lie in the way of a smooth transition over to CRM Online, he added.

While contract terms may allow the customer to cancel, they may not get a refund on the year's remaining fees, according to Wang. "Hopefully you'd be [signed up] month-to-month. Microsoft on Monday also announced price cuts for its Business Productivity Online Suite. It's good to check and see where you are in that process." Overall, however, "users win" in price wars like this, Wang said. Other SaaS (software as a service) vendors, such as NetSuite, have made a steady stream of financial enticements in recent months too, as sales slowed during the global recession. It is also planning to roll out the software worldwide in the second half of 2010, he said.

Salesforce.com has also quietly lowered monthly per-user fees for its two lowest-end editions, Contact Manager and Group Edition, to $5 and $25 respectively, down from $9 and $35. Meanwhile, Microsoft is announcing the CRM switch-over deal in conjunction with an update to CRM Online, Wilson said. The service is now available in North America. No credit card information is required to sign up, although users need to provide an e-mail address. In the new release, Microsoft made signing up for CRM Online "super-simple," he said. They can then start a free trial with either Microsoft's Outlook client or a browser-based interface, Wilson said.

A series of help tools provide information on setup and maintenance. Thirty-day trials include sample data so users can begin experimenting with the system. Microsoft has also developed an improved data import wizard. In addition, mobile access is available at no additional charge for any phone with a HTML 4.0-compliant Web browser. "We specifically tried to engineer [the application] to make it really easy for people who don't have CRM systems," Wilson said.

In Autodesk case, judge rules secondhand sales OK

A Seattle judge ruled in favor of a man arguing that he has the right to sell secondhand software, in a case that had some people worried about an end to used-book and CD stores. EBay later banned Vernor from the site, based on Autodesk's complaints. The suit was initially filed by Timothy Vernor after eBay, responding to requests by Autodesk, removed the Autocad software that Vernor was trying to sell on the auction site. Vernor argued that since he was selling legitimate versions of the software - not illegal copies - he hadn't violated any laws.

But no matter how Autodesk describes the agreement with customers, it is transferring ownership to end-users, the judge, from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, found. Autodesk contends that it doesn't "sell" its software, but instead licenses it and therefore prohibits buyers from reselling it. Autodesk had argued that its restrictions on the way that buyers can use the software show that users license rather than own the software. "A person who buys a home is nonetheless restricted in his use and subsequent transfer of the home by property laws, zoning ordinances, and fair housing statutes," Judge Richard Jones wrote in his ruling. "No one would characterize the person's possession, however, as something other than ownership. Autodesk said it will appeal the decision. "We disagree with the Court's interpretation and application of copyright law so, on that basis, will appeal the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Court of Appeals with jurisdiction over this matter. Similarly, the court cannot characterize Autodesk's decision to let its licensees retain possession of the software forever as something other than a transfer of ownership, despite numerous restrictions on that ownership." The judge also agreed with Vernor's argument that owners of software have "first sale" rights under copyright law, which entitles them to "sell or otherwise dispose of" the copy they bought.

We will rely on more recent Ninth Circuit cases that, as the district court acknowledged, favor Autodesk's position," the company said in a statement. But he said he thinks the impact will be minimal. In previous arguments, both sides warned of dire consequences that could follow the judge's decision. Autodesk argued that if the judge decided that people own its software, prices will rise for end-users. Vernor has argued that if the judge ruled that the software was indeed licensed, then any copyright owner could impose severe restrictions on how their products are used.

But that argument ignores the secondhand market, which offers better prices for consumers, the judge noted. "Although Autodesk would no doubt prefer that consumers' money reaches its pockets, that preference is not a basis for policy," Jones wrote. For instance, book publishers could bar resale and lending, eliminating the used-book market as well as libraries. The judge denied Vernor's charges against Autodesk of copyright misuse. Even if he had ruled against Vernor, such fear was "misplaced," the judge said. "Although the interpretation of 'owner' in the Copyright Act no doubt has important consequences for software producers and consumers, the court is skeptical that its ruling today will have far-reaching consequences," he wrote.

Senate kills bid to make White House czars accountable

A proposed amendment that would have given Congress more oversight over the White House cybersecurity czar and at least 17 other czars appointed by President Obama was shut down in the U.S. Senate today. Susan Collins (R-Maine), sought to restrict federal funds for the expenses of White House-appointed czars unless two conditions are met. The amendment, proposed by Sen.

One of them was to require the president to agree that every czar would respond to "reasonable requests" to testify before Congress on matters related to the office. The proposed amendment was in an Interior Department environmental appropriations bill on the Senate floor. The other required White House-appointed czars to issue a report to Congress twice a year. In a statement , Collins said the amendment was needed to ensure greater transparency and accountability. The amendment however was ruled "non-germane" to the pending bill in the Senate this afternoon and will not move forward, a spokesman for Collins said in an e-mail. "The amendment fell," following an objection by Sen. She had claimed that direct White House appointees were largely insulated from congressional oversight and often duplicated or diluted the statutory authority and responsibilities of Cabinet-level appointees who had been vetted by Congress.

Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), he said. At a committee hearing in May on strategies for securing cyberspace, Collins had said that putting the White House in charge would make it harder for Congress to exercise oversight over critical cybersecurity policies and budgets. Collins, who is the ranking minority member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, had raised similar concerns previously, especially with regard to Obama's plans to appoint a White House cybersecurity czar, or agency coordinator. Collins proposed instead that the government consider adopting the model used in setting up the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). The NCTC, which was established in August 2004 on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, works in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), a setup that allows for greater congressional oversight, she had said. The president announced the position in May and stressed the need for a national strategy for securing U.S. interests in cyber space. The developments come amid a delay by the White House in naming a new cybersecurity coordinator.

The delay in making the appointment has fueled speculation about the likely candidates and the nature of the job . Earlier this month, the Reuters news service. quoting an unnamed source with "direct knowledge" of the matter, said the front runner for the post was Frank Kramer , an assistant defense secretary under President Bill Clinton.

IPass makes MiFi available for business users

MiFi is going to the enterprise. The actual MiFi device will be free for a two-year service commitment, or $99 for a one-year commitment, on top of a one-time $50 configuration fee per device as well as the iPassConnect service. IPass Inc. said today it will resell in December the Novatel Wireless MiFi 2200 mobile broadband device used by consumers but it will be preconfigured with customer-specific security and connections to iPassConnect mobility manager software for business users. That service runs $45 to $60 per month per user in the U.S. and gives 3G WAN wireless broadband access as well as easy Wi-Fi connections globally to 160,000 hot spots, said iPass vice president of product and offer marketing Rick Bilodeau.

With iPassConnect, the IT shop of each company also has a single console where it can manage potentially thousands of users. IPass, launched in 1996, is already used by about 400 of the world's largest companies whose workers can find wireless WAN and Wi-Fi access from laptops using broadband cards easily as they travel from country to country, Bilodeau said in an interview. Adding MiFi to its portfolio means iPass customers can connect wirelessly as many as five Wi-Fi-enabled devices to the 2-ounce MiFi device , which then connects to a wireless CDMA 1x EV-DO Rev network. IPass has been device agnostic and already provides access to its software from a variety of laptop broadband cards, but the relationship with Novatel has been longstanding and seemed logical, Bilodeau said. The MiFi device without a service plan would cost a user about $215, Bilodeau said. "Today, MiFi is just an open hot spot out there, and we see the primary use of MiFi with iPass by folks in consulting and accounting or professional services who visit customer sites and can't use a third-party Wi-Fi service," Bilodeau said. "This approach allows a 3G wireless connection to a corporate VPN, so you still have security." IPass is adding SSID and security keys to MiFi devices specific to each customer, with a configuration to iPassConnect, he said.

It is not exclusive to Novatel, however, he said. Paulak said iPass is basically reselling the MiFi service offered by CDMA carriers Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel Inc., but iPass will be able to offer a more complete managed mobility service than Verizon or Sprint. With support for MiFi, iPass is able to extend its management service from, for example, a single worker to a workgroup that could need a temporary office solution as the group travels together, said Eric Paulak, a Gartner analyst. In addition to the MiFi service, iPass also announced a new Open Device Framework to allow its customers to quickly integrate new 3G devices into the iPassConnect software. Paulak said the Open Device Framework sounds like a good idea because it offers a process for helping customers connect to new and different devices, but he had reservations about its impact on newcomers to mobile management. "My concern is that it is going to be lost on most companies that don't see [device management] as a problem today," he said. "This is mainly a promise to existing customers ... but it will be hard to convince non-customers of the value of this type of service."

The capability will come to IT managers and others in the form of templates that can be adapted to a growing number of devices that will be wirelessly capable, including machine-to-machine devices that aren't even voice capable, Bilodeau said.

MySpace replaces all server hard disks with flash drives

Social networking site MySpace.com announced today that it has switched from using hard disk drives in its servers to using PCI Express (PCIe) cards loaded with solid state chips as primary storage for their data center operations. MySpace said the solid state storage uses less than 1% of the power and cooling costs that their previous hard drive-based server infrastructure had and that they were able to remove all of their server racks because the ioDrives are embedded directly into even its smallest servers. "We looked at a number of solid state solutions, using many different kinds of RAID configurations, but we felt that Fusion-io's solution was exactly what we needed to accomplish our goals," Buckingham stated. The PCIe cards, from Fusion-io Inc., have allowed MySpace to replace multiple server farms made up of 2U (3.5-in high) servers that had used 10 to 12 15,000 RPM Fibre Channel drives each with 1U (1.75-in high) servers using a single ioDrive . "In the last 20 years, disk storage hasn't kept pace with other innovations in IT, and right now we're on the cusp of a dramatic change with flash technologies," said Richard Buckingham, vice president of technical operations for MySpace, in a statement. MySpace's new servers also have replaced its high-performance hosts that held data in large RAM cache modules, a costly method MySpace had been using in order to achieve the necessary throughput to serve its relational databases.

Salt Lake City-based Fusion-io claims the ioDrive Duo offers users unprecedented single server performance levels with 1.5GB/sec. throughput and almost 200,000 IOPS. The system can reach such performance levels because four ioDrive Duos in a single server can scale linearly, which provides up to 6GB/sec. of read bandwidth and more than 500,000 read IOPS. The cards come in 160GB, 320GB and 640GB capacities. MySpace said its new servers using the NAND flash memory modules give it the same performance as its older RAM servers. A 1.28TB card is expected in the second half of this year. "Social networking sites and other Web 2.0 applications are very database dependent. Ethernet pipe," David Flynn, CTO of Fusion-io, said in an interview. Our 320GB ioDrive can fill a 10Gbit/sec.