IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (InfoWorld) 25/12/2008

The geek gifts you didn't get for Christmas 2008

It's hard to be a geek at Christmastime. Sure, there are lots of cool tech toys and gadgets on display on store shelves, and a few may have landed under your tree this year. Perhaps Absolutely Mad: 50 Years of Mad Magazine on DVD, a Microsoft Xbox 360, an Apple MacBook Pro 2008 edition, a Garmin Nuvi 880, and one or more of the hot smartphones: the Apple iPhone 3G, the Palm Treo Pro, the RIM BlackBerry Storm, or the T-Mobile G1.

But it takes a geek to know what a true geek really wants, and chances are your friends and family aren't all that geeky.

So which true-geek items might they have given you? InfoWorld's band of mad scientists -- a motley crew of software, networking, datacenter, and hardware experts that habituates the InfoWorld Test Center -- offers recommendations on what they lust after ? and know their fellow geeks do, too. Christmas may be over, but you can still give the gift of geek tech to yourself

[ Watch our geek gift guide slideshow. | Looking for a high-tech collectible? Peruse David Margulius' collectible tech gift guide. | Curious about last year's geek gift guide recommendations? Check them out! ]

In alphabetical order, here are our top 10 picks:
* Apple Time Capsule
* Botanicalls DIY Plant Twitter Kit
* Cathode Corner Nixie Watch
* EVGA GTX 200 Waterblock
* Eye-Fi Explore
* 4th Motion Gyroxus Full-Motion Game Chair
* MvixUSA MvixBox
* Sky Factory SkyV
* SRS Labs iWow for iPod Adapter
* Yoggie Gatekeeper Pico

And delve into our guide to collectible tech.

OK, we know you also really want a new mobile. If you didn't get one for the holidays, get the scoop on InfoWorld Test Center's top mobile picks.

Microsoft may release Windows 7 beta at show

Attendees at next month's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) could get the first public look at Windows 7, the next version of Microsoft's client OS.

At its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles in October, Microsoft said it would release the beta early in 2009. Though nothing has been confirmed, signs are pointing to sometime in January and possibly the CES show in Las Vegas as a likely release date. CES is scheduled for Jan. 8-11.

[ Will your PC run Windows 7? Find out with InfoWorld's Windows 7 compatibility calculator | Check out the InfoWorld Test Center benchmarks in "Windows 7 unmasked" | Follow the great Windows 7 debate. ]

A member of Microsoft's public relations team in the U.K. said in an e-mail that at the show, "Microsoft will be making some significant announcements including Windows 7." She did not specify exactly what the news around the OS would be. But several blogs, including All About Microsoft, have reported that beta testers are expecting a Windows 7 beta any day.

Furthermore, Microsoft wrote on a Web site for its Microsoft Developer Network Conferences (MDCs) that attendees of those conferences, some of which are scheduled for mid-January, can expect a Windows 7 beta DVD.

Some of the MDCs were this month and the site gave Microsoft an out if the beta wasn't released in December, saying that "the DVD will be shipped to attendees when it becomes available." A Windows 7 beta was not released at those conferences, and the next MDCs are scheduled for Jan. 13 in Chicago and Minneapolis.

Microsoft expects to release Windows 7 in early 2010, although some industry observers expect it may be out by the end of 2009 because of lackluster customer response to Windows Vista. Many business customers in particular have opted to skip Vista and run XP until Windows 7 is available.

Microsoft confirms it's been working on SQL bug since April

Microsoft Wednesday confirmed that it has been working on a critical vulnerability in SQL Server for more than eight months, but declined to say whether it has had a patch ready since September, as an Austrian security researcher has alleged.

On Monday, the company warned customers of a bug that could be used to compromise servers running older versions of the database software, which is widely used to power Web sites and applications.

[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]

"Microsoft opened an investigation for this vulnerability in April upon the initial report by the security researcher," said a company spokesman in an e-mail today. "We immediately started an investigation and have been working on this issue since that time," he added.

The researcher, Bernhard Mueller of SEC Consult Security, a Vienna-based security consulting company, went public with details of the vulnerability as well as exploit code on Dec. 9, apparently after tiring of Microsoft's lack of communication.

According to Mueller, who posted findings in an advisory on the SEC Consult site, as well as to prominent security mailing lists, the bug was reported to Microsoft on April 17, 2008, and Microsoft's last message to him was on Sept. 29. After four requests for an update on a patch's status during October and November, Mueller disclosed the vulnerability.

Mueller also said that Microsoft had informed him in September that it had completed a fix.

The Microsoft spokesman didn't directly respond to a question about whether the company had a patch in hand, as Mueller claimed, but instead said, "At this time, security updates are not available for the affected versions listed in Microsoft Security Advisory 961040 ."

Although it is true that Microsoft has not yet issued an update to the affected software -- which includes SQL Server 2000 , SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Desktop Engine and Windows Internal Database -- one security expert said he's betting that the company will release one soon.

"We expect that Microsoft is currently working on patch and will release it out of band," said Wolfgang Kandek , chief technology officer at security company Qualys Inc.

So-called "out-0f-band" or "out-of-cycle" updates are those that Microsoft issues on days other than its regularly scheduled monthly Patch Tuesday. Microsoft's next scheduled update is set for Jan. 13, 2009, nearly three weeks from today.

Microsoft has released two out-of-cycle emergency updates in the last two months, the most recent a fix issued a week ago to plug a hole in all versions of Internet Explorer. The IE vulnerability, however, was already being exploited by hackers prior to the patch's release; Microsoft has said it has no reports of in-the-wild exploitation of the SQL Server bug.

Kandek believes that a SQL Server patch will present more problems for companies than they faced with the IE fix. "Patch deployment will be slow," he said. "SQL [Server] is part of the core server infrastructure of many enterprise companies and is subject to lengthy patch and testing cycles before any such fix can be deployed."

In lieu of a patch, Microsoft has urged users to deny permissions to the SQL procedure that can be used to trigger the bug. Yesterday, it updated that recommendation by posting a Visual Basic script which, when run, automates the workaround. "Essentially, the script iterates through the running instances of SQL Server and denies execute permissions on 'sp_replwritetovarbin' to 'public' on all the affected versions," said Microsoft spokesman Bill Sisk in an entry to the Microsoft Security Response Center blog.

A document added yesterday to Microsoft's support database included the script and instructions on how to use it.

Qualys' Kandek urged users to heed Microsoft's warnings.

"The potential exists for leakage of private data and major disruptions in critical SQL [Server-] driven applications, such as e-commerce and human resources," he said. "A smart attacker can easily pair this exploit with another attack mechanism such as phishing to get behind the corporate firewalls and then attack all accessible SQL Server installations."

SQL Server has been patched twice in 2008, most recently in September . The database software's biggest security gaffe, however, was in early 2003, when the fast-acting Slammer worm exploited a critical vulnerability in SQL Server, resulting in massive Internet-wide outages and slowdowns as sites were knocked offline.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Google teams with Norad to track Santa on Christmas Eve

Want to know what time Santa will be touching down Christmas Eve to fill your stockings and drink the glass of milk you've left him?

Google is teaming up with Norad, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, to help you make your holiday visit calculations this year. Google announced Tuesday afternoon that children -- and even all the big kids out there -- will be able to track St. Nick's journey around the world using Google Maps and Google Earth .

[ Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]

"The partnership between Google and Norad to bring the Norad Tracks Santa Program to children around the world has been a perfect fit," said Stacia Reddish, a Norad Tracks Santa program manager. "Google has the server power needed for the program, and the fabulous people required in the mapping arena to ensure children know where Santa will be as he makes his trek around the globe."

While this isn't the first time that Google has helped people track Santa's big trip, this is the first year that they can follow him via their mobile phones with Google Maps for Mobile, and using Twitter by adding @noradsanta.

"I always thought Norad's Santa Tracker was a great holiday tradition, but I felt like it could have been even better if people could visualize exactly where Santa was on Christmas Eve," wrote Brian McClendon, an engineering director at Google in a blog post. "We're hoping this version of the tracker will be the best yet. In addition to our "Santa Cam" footage, geo-located photos from Panoramio http://www.panoramio.com/ will be viewable in Google Maps for each of Santa's stops that don't include video."

The tracking begins at 6 a.m. EST on Christmas Eve. Google noted that a Google Map with Santa's current location will appear at this Web address www.noradsanta.org and will be updated as his journey progresses. And people can track Santa in 3D in Google Earth by downloading a special Norad Tracks Santa KML at this Web site . Google added that they will have hi-resolution Santa Cam videos of the jolly man flying by different locations around the world.

McClendon wrote in his blog that last year Google became NORAD's official Santa Tracking technology partner and hosted www.santa.org . "The heavy traffic -- several millions of users -- put Google's infrastructure to the test, but with some heroic work by our system reliability engineers, the Santa Tracker worked continuously," he wrote, adding that they have upgraded their server capacity for this year. "We're hoping this version of the tracker will be the best yet."

Norad has been tracking Santa since 1958 and has been tracking him via the Web since 1998.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

10 tips to preserve data for the long haul

The growth of digital data is threatening to spiral out of control. More than 452 exabytes of information have been created and replicated this year -- an amount higher than the world's available storage capacity , according to IDC.

Not all data should be preserved, but efforts to save important information are being stymied by many factors: complacency, fear that the problem of long-term digital access and preservation is too big to take on, inadequate funding, confusion, and lack of alignment among stakeholders, a new report says. A better model for preserving data is needed, and it requires worldwide collaboration, says the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access, which consists of experts from universities, major libraries, and one tech company ( Microsoft ).

[ Get the latest on storage developments with InfoWorld's Storage Adviser blog and Storage Report newsletter. ]

"The long-term accessibility and use of valuable digital materials requires digital preservation activities that are economically sustainable -- in other words, provisioned with sufficient funding and other resources on an ongoing basis to achieve their long-term goals," task force co-chairman Brian Lavoie of the Online Computer Library Center said in a press release.

Although the task force says an industrywide solution is needed, there obviously are many steps individual IT shops can take to implement a better data preservation plan. The task force's second co-chair, Fran Berman, director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, offered a list of 10 tips for preserving data in a recent article.

Here is a look at Berman's advice:

1. Make a detailed plan for the stewardship and preservation of your data, from its inception to the end of its lifetime.

2. Be aware of data costs including hardware, software, support and time, and include them in your overall IT budget. Determine whether it is more cost-effective to regenerate some of your information rather than preserve it over a long period.

3. Associate metadata with your data. Identify relevant standards for data and metadata content and format, and follow them to make sure the data can be used by others.

4. Make multiple copies of valuable data. Store some copies off-site and in different systems.

5. Plan ahead of time for the transition of digital data to new storage media. Plan budgets for new storage and software technologies, file-format migrations, and time. Move data to new technologies before your storage media become obsolete. ( Compare storage products.)

6. Plan for transitions in data stewardship. If the data eventually will be turned over to a formal repository, institution or other custodial environment, make sure it meets the requirements of the new environment and that the new steward indeed agrees to take it on.

7. Determine the level of "trust" required when choosing how to archive data. Are the resources of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration necessary, or will Google do?

8. Tailor plans for preservation and access to the specific needs of users. Gene-sequence data used daily by hundreds of thousands of researchers worldwide may need a preservation and access infrastructure that's different from the infrastructure needed, for example, for digital photos viewed occasionally by family members.

9. Pay attention to security. Be aware of what you must do to maintain the integrity of your data.

10. Know the regulations. Know whether copyright, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, the U.S. National Institutes of Health publishing expectations, or other policies or regulations are relevant to your data. That way, you can make sure your approach to stewardship and publication is compliant.

Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate

Fake antivirus peddlers helped by Microsoft, IRS

Just weeks after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission shut down two companies accused of selling fake antivirus software, a new player has moved into the market, aided by glitches in the Microsoft and U.S. Internal Revenue Service Web sites.

Over the past four days the scammers have used so-called redirector links on Web sites belonging to magazines, universities and, most remarkably, the Microsoft.com and IRS.gov domains, said Gary Warner, director of research in computer forensics with the University of Alabama at Birmingham, who first reported the activity on his blog Tuesday.

[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]

Many Web sites use redirector links to take visitors away from the site, although the Web site operators try to stop them from being misused by scammers. For example, the Google URL http://www.google.com/search?q=idg&btnI=3564 uses Google's "I'm feeling lucky" feature to send Web surfers to IDG.com.

If criminals can use a redirector on a major Web site like Microsoft.com or IRS.gov, however, they can make their malicious links pop up very high in Google search results, Warner said in an interview.

"Microsoft is a super-powerful site as far as search engine weight is concerned," he said.

The bad guys have tricked search engines into returning their malicious links to tens of thousands of search terms, Warner said. They've done this by using special software to add these redirector links to "tens of thousands of blog comments, guestbook entries, and imaginary blog stories all around the Internet," Warner said in his blog posting.

You can see the results of this activity. A Google search for the term "Microsoft Office 2002 download" yields a Microsoft.com redirection link as its first result. That link had been redirecting visitors to a malicious Web site, which launched Web-based attack code against victims and tried to trick them into downloading fake antivirus software, Warner said. By Tuesday evening, Microsoft had fixed the problem, so the Microsoft.com link that pops up in the google search results was no longer taking surfers to the malicious Web site.

The IRS has now addressed the issue too, but about 20 other sites remain a problem Warner said.

The fake antivirus software, also called "scareware," installs a keylogger on the victim's computer, presumably to steal login names and passwords, and also launches fake warning popups on every Web page that the victim visits telling him he needs to buy antivirus software, called System Security. The price for the fake product? A believable-sounding $51.45.

The FTC estimates that 1 million consumers were taken in by other fake antivirus products which go by names such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe and XP Antivirus. On Dec. 10 a federal court ordered two companies, Innovative Marketing and ByteHosting Internet Services, to stop promoting these products.

Warner doesn't know who is behind System Security, but he believes that the scammers behind this latest operation may be connected to the earlier scams. "It's similar enough that it's got to be somebody who has a relationship with the last group," he said.

Rails and Merb Web frameworks agree to merge

The Web development frameworks Rails and Merb have decided to end their rivalry and join forces in a single project, they said Tuesday.

Both are open-source development frameworks for creating Web applications and services in the Ruby programming language. Rails has been around since about 2004, while Merb emerged earlier this year as what many see as a faster, more lightweight alternative.

[ For a closer look at the Rails IDEs, check out the InfoWorld Lab test "Climb aboard Ruby on Rails" | Keep up with app dev issues and trends with InfoWorld's Fatal Exception and Strategic Developer blogs. ]

A rivalry developed between the two that has been "tearing apart the community," Merb creator Ezra Zygmuntowicz wrote in a blog post . So the developers behind the projects have hashed out a plan to merge them into the forthcoming Rails 3 release.

"It's Christmas, baby, and do we have a present for you," Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson wrote in his blog Tuesday evening. "We're ending the bickering between Merb and Rails with this bombshell: Merb is being merged into Rails 3!"

"We all realized that working together for a common good would be much more productive than duplicating things on each side of the fence," he wrote. "Merb and Rails already share so much in terms of design and sensibility that joining forces seemed like the obvious way to go. All we needed was to sit down for a chat and hash it out, so we did just that."

The plan is to merge into Rails 3 the characteristics that made Merb different, Merb developer Yehuda Katz wrote in another posting . "This will make it possible to use Rails 3 for the same sorts of use-cases that were compelling for Merb users. Effectively, Merb 2 is Rails 3."

The plan calls for a more modular framework in Rails 3, so that developers can start with the Rails core and add other components as they want them. Merb will also port its performance improvements into Rails. "This includes architectural decisions that are big performance wins," Katz wrote.

Rails will get a public API (application programming interface) with a test suite that users and plug-in developers can build against, something that sets Merb apart today.

It won't be a "big bang rewrite" of Rails, Heinemeier Hansson said. "This is going to be a progressive improvement of Rails that'll carefully judge new initiatives on their impact on backwards compatibility as well as their general utility," he wrote.

The "probably-over-optimistic goal" is to have a beta of Rails 3 ready for the RailsConf in May next year, he said.

Before that, Rails 2.3 -- a "blockbuster release packed with goodies" -- is scheduled for release in January, he said.

"To be perfectly clear: we are not abandoning the Merb project," Katz wrote. "There are many production applications running on Merb that are relying on both timely bug fixes and a clear path to the future."

He continued: "If you're using Merb today, continue using Merb. If you're considering using Merb for a project because it works better for your needs, use Merb. You will not be left in the cold and we're going to do everything to make sure that your applications don't get stuck in the past."

Merb committer Carl Lerche describes how the detente came about in another blog post .

OS shoot-out: Windows vs. Mac OS X vs. Linux

The Mac's been on a roll, both due to its highly regarded Mac OS X Leopard operating system and to an unhappy reception for Microsoft's Windows Vista. The result: For the first time in memory, the Mac's market share has hit 9.1 percent, according to IDC data, and Windows' market share has dipped below 90 percent. (Linux distributions make up the rest.)

But can either Mac OS X or Linux be more than a niche OS? After all, Windows runs practically everything, from widely used productivity apps such as spreadsheets to highly niche applications such as chemical modeling. Mac OS X and Linux simply don't have the app base that Windows does. Of course, the fact you can run Windows on a Mac or Linux system, thanks to Parallels Desktop and EMC VMware Fusion, lets you have your cake and eat it too.

[ Find out the deployment secrets of Vista adopters and see how the beta Windows 7 performs | Follow InfoWorld's guides on switching to Mac OS X and switching to Linux. ]

For some users -- often technically savvy people such as engineers, consultants, designers, and CTOs -- it is clearly an option that already works quite well. In the past year, running Mac OS X or Linux as your default OS has been made easier by the capability to run Windows in a virtual machine, giving you access to both Windows-only applications and Web sites that rely on Microsoft's Internet Explorer-only ActiveX technology. But in a business environment, switching to a Mac or Linux PC may not be quite as easy.

The Windows option
Despite the increasing adoption of alternatives to Windows, the Microsoft OS remains the standard choice for the vast majority of businesses. After all, it's been their standard for nearly two decades; they know it, have become dependent on it, and understand its capabilities and limitations. Plus, it's backed by a company that puts a lot of resources into maintaining, supporting, and enhancing the OS for its very wide user base -- and has a huge third-party support system, from vendors to consultants.

For most businesses, considering something other than Windows is not even a question; their concern is when to shift to a new version of Windows. Still, as users (re)discover the Mac and questions over Windows' long-term resource requirements hang in the air, some are considering alternatives to, or at least supplements for, Windows in the form of Mac OS X and Linux.

The Mac OS X option
Of the plausible alternatives to Windows, Apple's Mac OS X has the largest market share and history. InfoWorld chief technologist Tom Yager has written that the latest version of the Mac OS, Leopard (10.5), is simply the best operating system available. And Macs are indeed popping up more frequently even within IT circles -- I've seen more MacBook Pros in the hands of CTOs and IT execs at conferences in the past year more than ever before. Although there are no real numbers on just the business adoption of Macs, it's clear that Apple is in growth mode, gaining an increasing proportion of all new computer sales for more than a year now.

Many businesses have already adopted the Mac as a standard platform, discovering that the hardware is typically better designed than equivalent Windows systems for the same price, that security risks are lower, and that there are more enterprise-quality management tools than they expected. InfoWorld has chronicled how to make the switch to Mac OS X.

The drive for Mac adoption often comes from users, not IT. InfoWorld's Yager has chronicled the adventures of one PC user who switched to the Mac OS, showing that for an individual, the conversion was ultimately a rewarding one.

A key tool for any Mac OS X switcher is a virtual machine to run Windows for those apps and Web sites that require it. Both Parallels Desktop 3.0 and VMware's Fusion software will do the trick, as InfoWorld's comparative review has shown.

Although Macs are compatible with most typical hardware, such as monitors and drives, fitting a Mac into an enterprise's management systems and ERP applications can be a different story. Yager's Enterprise Mac blog and the Mac Enterprise user group both provide advice on managing Macs in a traditional IT environment.

The Linux option
The more technically inclined may be attracted to Linux, the most popular form of desktop Unix. Linux desktops typically are challenged by limited hardware compatibility (due to lack of drivers), limited application options, and user interfaces that require active participation to get work done, which tends to keep Linux away from the general user population. Still, it's possible to do, and InfoWorld has chronicled how to make the switch to Linux.

But those who work with a Linux server all day may find that using it on the desktop as well actually makes their lives easier.

Just as Mac users need occasional access to Windows, so do Linux users. Because Linux distributions run on Windows-compatible hardware, it's straightforward to use desktop virtualization software, such as Parallels Workstation, Sun's (formerly Innotek's) VirtualBox, and VMware's Workstation software, to provide access to both environments.

Although some enterprises have committed to wide Linux deployment -- such as automaker Peugeot Citro?n's plans to install 20,000 Novell Suse Linux desktops -- most have left Linux to the engineering and development staff.

InfoWorld Enterprise Desktop blogger Randall Kennedy argues that desktop Linux is doomed to remain a tiny niche OS, given the Linux community's lack of interest in providing a UI that regular people could use. Kennedy tried to spend a week working on nothing but the Ubuntu distribution of Linux but gave up on the fifth day.

But Kennedy's take isn't the last word on desktop Linux. Frequent InfoWorld contributor Neil McAllister put together a special report on how to move from Windows to Linux, concluding that the effort was not as hard as you might think.

Who's right? As with any platform choice, they both may be. A one-size-fits-all approach may be unrealistic. And that likely explains why many businesses will have a mix, dominated by Windows XP today (and perhaps Windows 7 in a few years) but not exclusively tied to Microsoft's OS.

The future of open source

There's no question that the open source community is a passionate one -- and one with significant influence on technology directions and options. We're way past the days when people asked if Linux or Apache was safe to depend on in business. Open source is now a mainstream part of the technology fabric.

Yet it remains connected to its roots around a passionate community working together to solve problems and share the fruits of their labors with others. Any endeavor based in community is bound to spark passionate debate. After all, without contention, how else to determine the best way forward?

Since its emergence, open source has embodied this spirit. Part defiant, part self-reliant, and often outspoken and opinionated, those immersed in the community have worked both in tandem and at odds, all with the intention of pushing the movement in as many worthwhile directions at once.

[ See the slideshow: Roundtable: The state of open source | Discover the year's best open source apps: 2008 InfoWorld Bossie Awards | Keep up on open source developments with InfoWorld's Open Sources blog. ]

It's so worthwhile that the drumbeat of business can now be heard in nearly every corner of community, drawing the attention of vendors and capitalists alike. And with greater attention and potential has come a measure of added strife. Questions of selling out and just desserts surface more frequently, yet not to the jeopardy of the endeavor, as the code keeps proliferating, thanks to those who participate.

Given the increased reliance on open source by users and commercial vendors, as well as by the commercialization of some open source projects, InfoWorld spoke with 11 thought leaders in a roundtable discussion about the current open source climate to uncover the most vibrant themes and conflicts shaping open source today.

From pioneers Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond to technology strategists at Google, IBM, and Microsoft to the new guard of entrepreneurs and developers working to transform projects into products, each expert sheds ample light on the opportunities and pitfalls ahead.

Topic No. 1: Issues and opportunities
Topic No. 2: Evolving trends
Topic No. 3: The cost of commercialization
Topic No. 4: Avenues for acceptance
Topic No. 5: Missteps and lessons learned
Topic No. 6: Visions of utopia
Topic No. 7: Competition and dissent

Roundtable participants

Matt Asay
Vice president of business development, Alfresco

Andy Astor
CEO of EnterpriseDB

Chris DiBona
Open source programs manager, Google

Bruce Perens
Creator of the Open Source Definition and co-founder of the Open Source Initiative

Sam Ramji
Senior director of platform technology strategy, Microsoft

Eric S. Raymond
Programmer, author, and open source software advocate

Dave Rosenberg
CEO and co-founder, Mulesource

Javier Soltero
CEO, Hyperic

Mark Spencer
Founder and CTO, Digium

Robert Sutor
Vice president of open source and standards, IBM

Zack Urlocker
Vice president of products, MySQL

ASUG maintains moderate tone on SAP maintenance hike

SAP should be given the opportunity to convince users that its richer-featured but pricier Enterprise Support service is worth the extra expense, a board member of the Americas SAP Users Group said Tuesday.

In July, SAP announced plans to move all customers to Enterprise Support. The news prompted significant outcry from user groups in Europe, while ASUG, which claims to have more than 50,000 members, has maintained a more moderate tone.

[ For earlier developments on SAP's Enterprise Support, see "Update: SAP tweaks support offerings" | Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]

Maintenance pricing is an important issue, and "nobody likes a price increase," but ASUG's mission also includes tracking where SAP is "headed with the product," said board member Anthony Bosco, who is also CIO of Day & Zimmerman, a services provider with $2.2 billion in annual revenue.

Still, SAP must deliver on the promises it is making about Enterprise Support, Bosco said.

The SAP User Group Executive Network (SUGEN), consisting of user group representatives from around the world, is working with SAP to develop key performance indicators for Enterprise Support. SAP has said the parties will "jointly evaluate the progress of these KPIs against customer expectations on a regular basis and adjust the continued rollout of SAP Enterprise Support until the quality measures are achieved."

A more recent development seemed to raise a potential hindrance to that plan.

Earlier this month, SAP said that due to legal regulations specific to Germany and Austria, customers in those countries would be allowed to maintain their previous maintenance contracts if they choose, temporarily holding off the switch. The news prompted speculation that users in other countries would demand a similar option.

But Bosco said the KPI process should be allowed to play out: "I think there's a commitment from SAP to work with real KPIs and report back, to show there's real value. Ultimately these KPIs have to be developed. We have to see how it goes."

SAP has said the support change was necessary because customer environments have become more complex in recent years, and the new level of support would help lower customers' total cost of ownership.

"I understand it," Bosco said of the vendor's position. "Ten years ago, you put SAP in and you used it to run your back office."

That has since changed dramatically, with innovations such as mobile integration, he said.

ASUG is also looking for a new CEO, having ousted Steve Strout last month. The organization said at the time that previously said Strout's departure was not related to the Enterprise Support issue, a position Bosco reiterated Tuesday.

"Anytime you have groups of people, you have different perspectives and methods on how to get to a place," he said. Strout could not be reached for comment.

Sun executive reveals more open source plans for JavaFX

A Sun Microsystems executive has provided a glimpse into the company's future plans for open sourcing JavaFX, its recently released technology for building RIAs (rich Internet applications) for the desktop, mobile devices, and other platforms.

Sun's corporate image is grounded in its embrace of open source software and some components of JavaFX, including the JavaFX compiler and elements of graphic libraries, are now available under the GPLv2 open source license, according to the official JavaFX FAQ.

[ Get the analysis and insights that only Randall C. Kennedy can provide on PC tech in InfoWorld's Enterprise Desktop blog. And download our free Windows performance-monitoring tool. ]

But other key components are still proprietary. Sun is now working to change this, according to a recent blog post by Jeet Kaul, vice president of the Client Software Group.

"There are some dependencies on licensed code that cannot be open sourced. We are working towards decoupling the dependencies so that the non-proprietary portions can be open sourced," Kaul wrote. "We will put the core runtime out in the open over time."

Kaul did not spell out the nature of the dependencies. A spokesman for Sun did not immediately respond to a request for more information Tuesday.

Sun will also publish specifications for new file formats associated with JavaFX, "shortly," Kaul said.

Kaul's blog post came in response to those questions and others posted by Java developer Osvaldo Pinali Doederlein.

The Sun executive also provided an updated road map for JavaFX, writing that the mobile platform -- now in beta -- will be released "by March" and a visual designer tool will be available in the middle of next year.

While JavaFX will compete with a range of other RIA toolsets, such as Adobe's AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) and Microsoft's Silverlight, Sun is banking that Java's pervasive market penetration will give it an edge.

10 things that won't survive the recession

The government says we've been in a recession for the past year. Experts say it'll be at least another year before it's over. And everybody says it's the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Nice sound bite. What does that mean?

[ Learn more about how the financial crisis is affecting IT and the high-tech industry, plus what IT can do to help, in InfoWorld's special report. | Keep up on the latest tech news headlines at InfoWorld News, or subscribe to the Today's Headlines newsletter. ]

Who knows? We can be sure that this downturn will differ totally from the Depression, and also different from the many recessions we've suffered every decade or every other decade since the '30s. I'm not an economist or a historian, but it seems to me that this recession will be something unprecedented.

One reason is that that there was no Internet or mobile technology in the 1930s. That means individual people and companies have very low-cost, high-efficiency alternatives for doing a wide range of activities. That will accelerate the demise of those things fated to be replaced anyway.

Here are 10 things that I believe won't survive the recession.

1. Free tech support
The practice still employed by some companies of paying humans to answer phones and solve technical problems with hardware or software purchased for consumers will become a thing of the past. PCs, laptops, and hardware peripherals, as well as application software -- these categories will be purchased like airline tickets, with price becoming the sole criteria for many buyers. In order to compete on price, companies who now offer real tech support will replace it with message boards (users helping users), wikis, wizards, software-based troubleshooting tools, and other unsatisfying alternatives.

2. Wi-Fi you have to pay for
Everyone is going to share the cost of public Wi-Fi because the penny-pinching public will gravitate to places that offer "free" Wi-Fi. Companies that charge extra for Wi-Fi will see their iPhone, BlackBerry, and netbook-toting customers -- i.e., everybody -- taking business elsewhere. The only place you'll pay for Wi-Fi will be on an airplane.

3. Landline phones
Digital phone bundles for homes (where TV, home networking, and landline phone service are offered in a total package) will keep the landline idea alive for a while, but as millions of households drop their cable TV services and as consumers look to cut all needless costs, the trend toward dropping landline service in favor of cell phone service only will accelerate until it's totally mainstream, and only grandma still has a landline phone.

4. Movie rental stores
The idea of retail stores where you drive there, pick a movie, stand in line, and drive home with it will become a quaint relic of the new fin de siecle (look it up!). The new old way to get movies will be discs by mail, and the new, new way will be downloading.

5. Web 2.0 companies without a business plan
The era when Web-based companies could emerge and grow on venture capital, collecting eyeballs and members at a rapid clip and deferring the business plan until later are dead and gone. Yeah, I'm talking to you, Twitter. Sand Hill Road-style venture capital is shrinking toward nothing, and investors in general will be hard to come by. Those few remaining investors will want to see real, solid business plans before the first dollar is wired to any startup's bank.

6. Most companies in Silicon Valley
Tech company failures and mergers will leave the industry with a low two-digit percentage (maybe 25 percent) of the total number of companies now in existence. Like the automobile industry, which had more than 200 car makers in the 1920s and emerged from the Depression with just a few, Silicon Valley is in for some serious contraction. The difference is that the auto industry ended up with the Big Three, whereas the number of tech companies will grow dramatically again during the next boom.

7. Palm Inc.
Elevation Partners, which has among its principals U2 lead singer Bono, pumped a whopping $100 million into the failing Palm Inc. this week.

The idea is to give the company time to release its forthcoming Nova operating system, which will take the cell phone world by storm and give Apple a run for its money. It would have been far more efficient, however, to just flush that money down the toilet. With the iPhone setting the handset interface agenda, BlackBerry maker RIM kicking butt in the businesses market, and Google stirring up trouble with its Android platform, this is no time for a clueless company like Palm to be introducing a new operating system. By this time next year, Palm will be gone. And so might Elevation Partners.

8. Yahoo
Yahoo is another company that can't seem to do anything right. Or, at least, can't compete with Google. Yahoo will be acquired by someone, and its brand will become an empty shell -- used for some inane set of services but appreciated only by armchair historians (joining the ranks of Netscape, Napster, and Commodore).

9. Half of all retail stores
Many retail stores are obsolete and will be replaced by online competitors. Entire malls will become ghost towns. By this time next year, most video game stores, book stores and toy stores -- as well as many other categories -- will simply vanish. Amazon.com will grow and grow.

10. Satellite radio
I'm sorry, Howard Stern. It's over. The newly merged Sirius XM Radio simply cannot sustain its losses. The company is already deeply in debt and would need to dramatically increase subscribers over the next six months in order to meet its debt obligations. Unfortunately, new car sales, where a huge percentage of satellite radios are sold, are in the gutter and stand-alone subscriptions are way down.

Change is hard. But efficiency is good. While boom years gives us radical innovation and improve consumer choice, recessions help us focus on what's really important and accelerate the demise of technologies and companies that are already obsolete.

So say good-bye to these 10 things, and say hello (eventually) to a new economy, a new boom and a new way of doing things.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. He blogs about the technology needs, desires and successes of mobile warriors in his Computerworld blog, The World Is My Office. Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com, follow him on Twitter or his blog, The Raw Feed. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Choppy water ahead for VMware?

Question marks have been raised over the ability of VMware to meet its fourth-quarter revenue numbers, after a turbulent 12 months for the virtualization giant that saw the ousting of its co-founders, and a massive decline in its share price.

Despite a string of healthy trading figures, Wall Street seems to have fallen out of love with the virtualization vendor. Other investors are becoming openly cautious about VMware, a point highlighted in a blog by Zachary Scheidt, a managing general partner for a private hedge fund.

[ Stay up to date on the latest virtualization developments with InfoWorld's Virtualization Report blog and newsletter. ]

Scheidt pointed out that last month Morgan Stanley issued a "sell" recommendation on VMware's shares. UBS followed suit and also rated the virtualization software vendor as a sell.

"On November 4th we initiated an RTI (Research Tactical Idea) for a trading sell on VMW, and now see further risk near term," said Morgan Stanley in its latest research note on VMware. "First, Q4 is off to a slow start and we believe VMW may struggle to hit consensus. Second, ELA (VMware's Enterprise Licence Agreement) momentum is slowing, which likely removes a major driver of license growth. Third, headcount will weigh on margins in the first half of 09."

"Now, I don't always put too much credence in recommendations from brokerages, but since sell ratings are so rare, I thought it worth a look," said Scheidt on his blog. "Upon further review, there were some very interesting red flags raised that indicate caution is still important with this name," he wrote.

Scheidt highlighted the disastrous slide of VMware's shares over the past 14 months. Shares in the company are currently trading at the $24.50 (£16) mark, a far cry from the heady heights of $122 (£82) reached in November 2007.

Scheidt also picked up on Morgan Stanley's concern that VMware will have a difficult time meeting its fourth-quarter revenue numbers. This is because as early as November, the "channel checks" that analysts undertake have suggested weakness in the sector.

A more detailed analysis can be found here.

"As a matter of policy, we don't comment on stock price fluctuations," said Reza Malekzadeh, EMEA Senior Director of Products and Marketing at VMware. "But what I can say is that the fundaments of the business are sound. According to a recent Goldman Sachs IT spending survey, for the past 12 quarters VMware has been gaining increasing amount of IT spend. Indeed, VMware has been the number 1 recipient for IT spend for past 12 quarters."

"We are very mature software company, but some quarters are more back end loaded than others," Malekzadeh told Techworld. "I would say that we have the same financial rhythm as other companies.

"But it is unprecedented times we are currently in, and it would be foolish of me to say it is not affecting us, like other companies," he added.

"VMware as a technology company has to maintain its leadership and has to innovate, and we have no intension of slowing innovation down," he said. "The path that typically customers start down with virtualisation is to virtual the servers in order to get a capital gain (capex), but as they move forward with deploying virtualisation, they start to achieve operational expense savings, for example it requires less administrators to run workloads etc."

Malekzadeh pointed out that we could expect to see product announcements in the following areas over 2009, namely Virtual Datacentre Operating System; Vcloud (allows customers to move their applications seamlessly between their facility and a hosting facility without closing it down); and finally the client.

"The desktop is a huge marketplace with a lot of pain points for companies (managing the systems etc), and virtualisation can bring whole new advantages to that world," he said.

Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Mobile Web use hits an upward curve at last

Data traffic to mobile phones jumped 463 percent in November compared to the same month last year, according to the latest State of the Mobile Web report from Opera Software.

Page views were up by 303 percent over the year, the company said. The statistics measure Web usage via Opera Mini, a widely installed browser which uses Internet-hosted servers to pre-process Web data before it is downloaded to the phone.

[ Need a phone to get on the mobile Web? Check out "InfoWorld's guide to next-gen mobile" slideshow | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]

Opera's records of page views and data consumed suggest that mobile Web use turned the corner around the end of 2007 and is now on an exponential curve upward.

In particular, it has jumped in North America, with the United States now in the top three of Opera Mini-using countries. However, while in every European country -- and in Mexico -- it is Nokia and Sony Ericsson handsets that dominate, the U.S. and Canadian lists are topped by BlackBerrys. Nowhere in Europe does a BlackBerry even get into Opera's top 10.

People are using more data in more locations and now expect a broadband experience on their phone, said Jon von Tetzchner, Opera's CEO. "More people viewing more pages on mobile phones is the clear trend," he said. "The mobile Web is growing around the world, even in countries where broadband penetration is high. In fact, it is growing because consumers are used to having ubiquitous access to the Web and expect to have it wherever they are."

He added: "But the real promise of the mobile Web is in connecting those who do not have broadband. The next billion people will use the Web first on their mobile phones. Once that happens we will finally both unleash the vast potential and realize the greatest benefit of the mobile Web."

Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Apple releases fix for Mail app under OS X 10.5.6

Apple on Monday released an update to its Mail e-mail client, designed to fix crashing problems experienced after updating to OS X 10.5.6.

Mail Update 1.0 addresses a problem where a copy of Mail that wasn't properly updated while installing the 10.5.6 update unexpectedly quits. For those who have installed 10.5.6 and whose copy of Mail doesn't show a version number of 3.5 (930.3), the update should show up in OS X's Software Update mechanism.

[ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]

If you have the proper version number and still are experiencing crashes, Apple suggests updating or removing third-party plug-ins, which may be causing the crashing problems.

Macworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Will Google and Microsoft own the Web?

It's something of an open secret that Mozilla, the organization behind the open source Firefox Web browser, gets most of its funding from Google -- 91 percent, to be exact. The deal gives Google top placement in Firefox's search engine bar. But now that Google is also shipping Chrome, its own branded browser, some critics are asking whether the search engine giant's deep pockets have allowed it to gain too much influence over the Web browser market.

This week, Mozilla CEO John Lilly admitted that his organization's relationship with Google is "more complicated than it used to be" in light of the current funding arrangement. But Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz goes even further, claiming that because the market is controlled by just a few giant companies -- namely Google and Microsoft -- the Web browser has become "hostile territory" for application developers. Could the days of an open Web be coming to an end?

[ See how InfoWorld's Test Center rates the browsers: "Lab test: Google Chrome vs. Internet Explorer 8" and "Firefox 3 comes out sizzling" | Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ]

The technologies used to build Web pages -- including HTML, JavaScript, and CSS -- are all open standards, maintained by industry consortia. No one company owns them. But experimental features often appear in new browser releases first, then are integrated into the official standards later. One example is Google's Gears technology, which is built into Chrome and is available as a plug-in for Firefox and Internet Explorer. Gears is widely expected to influence the upcoming HTML 5 standard.

That's all well and good, except that arguably only Microsoft can compete with Google's share of the browser market. For example, Opera is a longstanding alternative browser that is often praised for its compliance with Web standards, but its market share is but a fraction of that of Firefox or IE. Because of Opera's narrower reach, a new feature introduced in Opera might be seen as less significant, and therefore be less likely to become part of the public standards.

Sun's Schwartz has good reason to fear a market where large companies wield an undue influence over widely-used technologies. A few years ago, Sun fought a protracted legal battle with Microsoft over the Redmond-based giant's nonstandard implementation of Sun's Java programming language. Sun argued -- successfully -- that Microsoft's actions amounted to an attempted hostile takeover of Java.

Rather than see the same scenario play out on the Web, Schwartz argues that developers should avoid the "hostile territory" altogether. Instead of the browser, he says, developers should build applications using Sun's new JavaFX technology. But this seems somewhat disingenuous, considering that JavaFX is so far almost entirely the brainchild of Sun, and is therefore less open than any browser.

But there are other reasons to be concerned about Google's stake in Firefox and Chrome, too. Some privacy advocates worry that Google's influence over the browser market gives it access to too much user data, which the company collects for the purposes of its massively lucrative online advertising business.

What do you think? Does the overwhelming influence of Google and Microsoft on the browser market mean the Web is destined to become just another proprietary platform? Or will the influence of open source and open standards bodies ensure that the Web remains a free, public resource? Sound off in the PC World community forums.

Neil McAllister is a freelance technology writer based in San Francisco. PC World is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Credit crunch takes toll on datacenter spending

The deepening financial crisis is causing more businesses to lower their datacenter budgets for 2009, with spending on training and new hardware likely to feel the brunt of the cutbacks, according to a survey from Afcom, an association for datacenter workers.

Of employees at 133 large datacenters that responded to the survey, 38 percent, or more than a third, said they had been asked to cut their budgets since Afcom conducted a similar survey in May. In the earlier survey, 19 percent expected their budget to be cut for next year.

[ Learn more about how the financial crisis is affecting IT and the high-tech industry, plus what IT can do to help, in InfoWorld's special report. | Stay ahead of advances in technology with InfoWorld's Ahead of the Curve blog and newsletter. ]

The new survey was conducted last month, and the change reflects new cutbacks planned since the depth of the financial crisis became apparent in the autumn. The average cutback will be a 15.2 percent reduction in data center spending in 2009, Afcom said.

The survey was completed by IT and facilities staff at large data centers primarily in the United States.

Of those datacenters asked to cut their budgets, 30 percent will reduce spending on travel; 21 percent on IT equipment such as servers and storage; 23 percent on training; 16.5 percent on support gear such as cooling, power backup, and power distribution systems; and 14 percent on staffing costs, Afcom said.

While travel and training feature prominently, those budgets are typically small relative to new equipment purchases, and most of the actual spending reductions will be in hardware, according to Afcom president Jill Eckhaus.

"Many more actual dollars will be cut on the equipment side than in areas like travel and training," she said.

That is supported by another figure in the new survey: 86 percent of respondents said they expect increased use of virtualization in 2009 to reduce the need to buy new physical servers.

Only 12.6 percent of datacenters surveyed said they plan to increase their use of hosted applications next year, while 22.7 percent will increase their use of cloud computing services, according to Afcom.

Of those that won't expand cloud computing use, half said it was not applicable to their "current or future datacenter management strategy." The others gave reasons that were split evenly between security, cost, lack of reliability, and lack of confidence in service providers.

One technology that will see increased use is video conferencing: nearly 70 percent of datacenters said they will use more of it to reduce travel costs.

Asked what impact the spending cutbacks will have next year, 13 percent said they'll likely affect salary increases, and 20 percent said they would decrease worker satisfaction. Three percent predicted more service interruptions.

Combined, the two surveys suggest that just under half of large datacenters plan to make some sort of cutbacks next year, Eckhaus said. She was able to find a silver lining in that, however.

"It's still good news because it shows that a little more than half of 2009 datacenter budgets are not being impacted," she said. "These companies are cutting other parts of their budgets but not their datacenters, and that's indicative to me that corporations recognize how critical datacenters are to their businesses."

Thursday, December 25, 2008

IT News HeadLines (InfoWorld) 25/12/2008

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