IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (InfoWorld) 16/01/2009

Firm seeks to bar Nokia, RIM, Palm from importing devices in U.S.

A patent-holding company from Texas is seeking to bar six companies -- including BlackBerry maker Research in Motion, Palm, and Nokia -- from importing handheld devices into the U.S. for allegedly violating its patents.

Saxon Innovations, based in Tyler, Texas, filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) on Dec. 19, and on Thursday, the ITC voted to investigate the complaint. If the ITC finds that the complaint is legitimate, it could bar the handheld makers from importing products, such as mobile phones and remote control devices, containing the patented inventions.

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

At issue are three patents that Saxon purchased in July 2007, a patent for keypad monitor with keypad activity-based activation; a patent for an apparatus and method for disabling interrupt marks in processors or the like; and a patent for a device and method for interprocessor communication by using mailboxes owned by processor devices. Saxon, with five employees, purchased about 180 U.S. patents formerly owned by Advanced Micro Devices or Legerity in 2007, according to its ITC complaint.

The keypad monitor patent was granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in August 1993 to AMD. The interrupt marks patent was granted in June 1996, and the mailbox patent was granted in March 1997, both to AMD.

In recent years, several large tech vendors have pushed the U.S. Congress to make it more difficult for patent holders to file claims. Tech vendors including Microsoft, IBM , and Intel have complained that it's too easy for patent-holding companies to win huge patent awards against tech companies with products that may contain dozens of patents.

Saxon didn't immediately return a phone call seeking comment on its ITC complaint.

Saxon's complaint alleges that Nokia's N73 mobile phone violates two of the three patents, and its N95 phone violates the third. RIM's BlackBerry 8100 Pearl device violates two of the patents, and Palm's Treo 700p violates two of the patents, according to Saxon's complaint.

Other companies named in the ITC complaint are High Tech Computer of Taiwan and a U.S. subsidiary; Panasonic of Japan and two subsidiaries; and AVC Networks of Japan. The ITC complaint involves so-called Section 337 violations of the U.S. Tariff Act of 1930.

Representatives of Nokia, Panasonic, RIM and Palm weren't immediately available for comment.

In June, Saxon also filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, alleging that six computer makers, including Apple, Dell and Hewlett-Packard, have violated two of the patents in the ITC complaint.

The next step in the ITC investigation is for an administration judge to hold a hearing on the complaint. Within 45 days, the ITC will set a target date for completing the investigation.

ITC patent complaints can result in several different outcomes, said Peg O'Laughlin, an ITC spokeswoman. Some complaints are dropped, some settled, but "many, many" result in an ITC ruling barring imports of products, she said.

Symantec releases patch for application delivery program

Symantec and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) are warning about a serious vulnerability within the company's AppStream product, used for steaming applications from a central server to thin-client desktops, though a patch has been released.

The product affected is AppStream version 5.2, which is part of the Symantec Endpoint Virtualization Suite formerly known as Software Virtualization Solution (SVS) Pro.

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

The problem lies in the LaunchObj ActiveX control, which fails to validate external input when called on by an unauthorized server. CERT wrote in a brief advisory on Friday that if a user can be convinced into viewing a specially crafted HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) document, a hacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of that user.

Symantec has created an update to fix the problem and advised administrators to apply it.

Both Symantec and CERT discovered the flaw, which Symantec rated as "high" severity. However, it appears that no exploits have been publicly released.

Symantec acquired AppStream in April 2008. Symantec had sold the AppStream software since 2006.

In the beginning: The making of the Mac

In 1977, Apple made a splash on the world stage by introducing the Apple II, one of the world's first personal computers. In the time between the Apple II's release and IBM's introduction of the first IBM PC in 1981, Apple dominated the personal computer industry.

However, almost as soon as the Apple II was launched, the company began planning successors for its flagship product, fearing that the Apple II would have a limited lifespan. (These fears wound up being unfounded, as variations on the original Apple II model sold well for more than 15 years.) The most enduring result of this quest was the Macintosh computer, which on Jan. 24 celebrates its 25th anniversary.

[ Discover the key Mac and Apple tech trends for business users. Read InfoWorld's Enterprise Mac blog and newsletter. ]

The course of events that led to the Mac as we know it was convoluted, the result of luck or coincidence as much as planning. But those events began with desire of Apple executives to develop a next-generation computer following the success of the Apple II.

Apple III
The first stop on the journey to a post-Apple II world was the Apple III. Conceived as a business machine, the Apple III was compatible with Apple II hardware and software but also ran software designed specifically for the Apple III.

The Apple III turned out to be one of Apple's biggest flops. Plagued with design flaws (including an overheating issue, due to Steve Jobs ' insistence that the system ship without an internal fan) and offering hardware that didn't go significantly beyond what could be added to the less-expensive Apple II, the Apple III was eventually pulled from production after costing Apple $60 million (most of it in support efforts for customers).

Lisa
Another next-generation computer conceived as a business machine was the Apple Lisa. The Lisa's original specifications were for a basic business computer with a price tag of $2,000. It was not intended to offer any next-generation features. But when it was released in 1983, the Lisa became the first Apple product to feature a graphical user interface (GUI), similar to the one that would ship on the Mac a year later.

Early in the development of the Lisa, Jobs and a handful of Apple engineers made two trips to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) . Xerox had created PARC as a think tank for engineers to develop new technologies -- a place where some of the brightest technical minds could work to develop innovative products.

Technologies such as Ethernet, object-oriented programming and GUI operating systems that accepted input from a mouse all emerged from PARC. Focused more on its copier business than on the emerging computer revolution, Xerox Corp. let many of these technologies languish because executives couldn't understand how to turn them into marketable products.

In 1979, Jobs and a team of Apple employees arranged two visits to PARC, allowing Xerox in return to invest in Apple before the company's initial public offering. After seeing the earliest examples of many modern computing technologies -- most notably the mouse-driven graphical operating system of the Xerox Alto -- Apple decided to add as many of these technologies as feasible to the Lisa spec sheet. Engineers at Apple set about reverse-engineering and expanding on many of the features they had seen at PARC.

The result was a computer that looked little like the original plans. When the Lisa shipped, it included a built-in display, a keyboard and a one-button mouse. The Lisa operating system featured not just a GUI that responded to mouse input, but several innovations that would go on to become standard features in Mac OS , Windows and other modern operating systems: files represented by icons, pull-down menus, and drag-and-drop functionality. It also pioneered Apple's QuickDraw screen-drawing technology.

Lisa also shipped with a suite of productivity applications that included spreadsheet, drawing, word processing, graphing, project management and terminal-emulation programs -- and a file manager. This was an important inclusion, as the Lisa was incompatible with any other software on the market (including the Mac when it was released).

Despite pioneering many technologies, the Lisa never developed a significant following, largely because of its $9,995 price tag. Other factors in its failure were its incompatibility with other systems, its somewhat finicky floppy drives and rumors that Apple was working on a less-expensive "baby Lisa."

Apple did drop the price to $6,995 later in 1983, and the Lisa 2 was priced at $3,495 when it shipped in 1984. Still, Lisa sales failed to take off. Eventually, Apple converted its stock of Lisas so they would work with the Mac OS and sold the remaining units as the Mac XL. A conversion kit was also sold to existing Lisa owners. When the Lisa was finally discontinued in 1989, Apple literally buried the product, interring all unsold Lisas in a landfill in Logan, Utah.

The original Mac concept
Despite the fact that the Mac would go on to be a revolutionary product, it had humble beginnings. Commissioned in 1979, the Mac was conceived as a low-cost personal computer intended for the average consumer, with a price tag of around $500. The Mac project was initially considered a research product, one that didn't have the high profile of either the Apple III or the Lisa. Jef Raskin, at the time Apple's director of publications and new product review, was chosen to oversee it.

The somewhat obscure nature of the Mac project was one of the factors that led to its radical reimagining by Steve Jobs. After the failure of the Apple III, the Apple board had reservations about allowing Jobs to manage another high-profile project. When Jobs asked to take over the Mac project, the board allowed him to do so, feeling that the relatively unknown project wasn't critical to Apple's wellbeing.

Under Jobs, the Mac went from being a low-cost computer with a traditional text-based interface to being a less-expensive version of the Lisa. But duplicating the work happening on the Lisa wasn't the only goal Jobs had in mind. He envisioned the Mac as expanding on the Lisa's advances.

The result was a resolution by Jobs and his Mac team not only to make a "baby Lisa" but also to turn the Mac into a product that could advance the computing industry as much as or more than the Apple II had done -- or, as Jobs has been quoted as saying, to "put a dent in the universe."

The Lisa and Mac teams actually worked simultaneously on similar technologies for some time, and a rivalry between the two groups developed. The Mac team fancied themselves as pirates -- going so far as a to fly a pirate flag outside their workspace -- as opposed to the more corporate-oriented Lisa team. During the race to get both products to market, Jobs made a $5,000 bet with Lisa project manager John Couch that the Mac team would win. In the end, the Lisa made it to market first, but the Mac developed a much larger following -- and a much longer lifespan.

The drive to develop the Mac took on an almost religious fervor, with Jobs giving T-shirts to his engineers that read "90 HRS/WK AND LOVING IT." Throughout the process, ideas and even employees were regularly poached from other teams within Apple.

One casualty of this zeal was Raskin; after repeated conflicts and a final showdown with Jobs, he chose to leave Apple and the Mac behind. Raskin eventually did end up developing some of his original ideas for the Mac into a word processor, which was sold in the late 1980s as the Canon Cat .

Despite the passion and long hours that went into its development, the Mac slipped past its ship dates more than once -- largely because the difficulty of developing the system was underestimated. After the team missed one date in 1982, Mike Markkula, chairman of Apple's board at the time, gave Jobs a woman's black undergarment, saying that it was "the Mac's last slip."

What the Mac became
While many things changed during the Mac's development, some of the original design concepts remained. Conceived by Raskin for the "person in the street," the Mac was from the beginning aimed at being simple to use without complications such as expansion slots or cables. This consideration meant that users wouldn't need to worry about opening the computer for any reason.

The idea inspired the Mac's all-in-one look (and lack of expandability). Even the "person in the street" idea ended up informing the Mac's eventual tagline as "the computer for the rest of us." Indeed, although Jobs took over the Mac project and Raskin left Apple before it shipped, Raskin is often credited as the father of the Mac.

Still, the computer that Apple shipped in 1984 bore only a passing resemblance to Raskin's original Mac concept. In fact, rather than costing the consumer $500, the first Macintosh to ship cost Apple about that much to produce. The ultimate cost for new Mac owners was $2,495.

When Steve Jobs unveiled the Mac on Jan. 24, 1984, it was something the likes of which the world had never seen. The new computer featured a bright graphical display and all-in-one design, relied on a mouse for input, and even offered speech synthesis capabilities. It garnered praise from both computer and mainstream publications, though some criticized the monochrome display, lack of expandability and incompatibility with existing software.

Paltry by today's standards, the original Mac featured a 9-in. black-and-white display, 3.5-in. floppy drive (which could store 400KB of data on each disk), 128KB of RAM and a Motorola 68000 processor running at 8 MHz. It shipped with MacWrite, a word processing tool, and MacPaint, a drawing tool. Later the same year, Apple shipped the Mac 512K, which doubled the installed RAM but kept the same design.

In fact, it wouldn't be until early 1987 that Apple would ship Macs that offered expansion slots or deviated from the all-in-one style of the original (a design still used by today's iMac line). Embedded on the inside of the case of every original Mac are the signatures of each member of the team that helped create it, including Raskin and Jobs.

Over the past 25 years, the Mac has grown and changed significantly. The original model has given way to hundreds of updated models over the years. The processor family on which the Mac is based has gone through two major changes. Apple has even successfully managed to change the core of the Mac operating system in the release of Mac OS X.

And yet the Mac remains true to its beginnings, an icon of how simple a computer can be and how much it can do.

Ryan Faasis a frequent Computerworld contributor specializing in Mac and multiplatform network issues. Find more about him at RyanFaas.com . Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Windows 7 on netbooks: Does Linux stand a chance?

Possibly Microsoft's most important strategic goal for Windows 7, in addition to redeeming the brand damage done by Windows Vista, is to dominate netbooks, now the fastest selling segment of the PC market.

This may not bode well for the Linux operating system. With netbooks, the open-source OS with a highly tech-savvy audience found a market where it could legitimately threaten Windows. But Linux will face an uphill battle in this category now that the sleeping software giant has been awoken to the opportunity that netbooks present, say industry analysts.

[ Related InfoWorld special report: Early looks at Windows 7 ]

Top netbook vendors Asus and Acer, which together account for the majority of the netbook market, run Linux on roughly 30 percent of their Eee PC and AspireOne netbooks respectively-a figure that dwarfs Linux's nearly 1 percent share of the higher-end PC market. Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Lenovo released netbook products in the fourth quarter of 2008, all in the $400 price range and offering a choice of either Windows XP or some flavor of Linux.

[ For more on products in the hot netbook category, check out our hands-on looks at Asus' Eee PC 901 and 1000 and the N10 netbook, the Cloudbook Max netbook, Elitegroup's G10IL mini-laptop, MSI's Wind low-cost laptop, Giga-byte's M912X mini-laptop, HP's Mini-Note netbook and Acer's Aspire one. ]

But Microsoft designed Windows 7, unlike notorious resource hog Vista, with netbooks in mind (Click here for a video demo of the Windows 7 pre-beta running on a netbook). According to Microsoft's Windows Consumer Product Managing Director Parri Munsell, "Windows 7 has been optimized and engineered to run on anything, from the smallest notebook to the most loaded laptop or desktop."

Netbooks Crept Up on Microsoft
Why is making Windows 7 small form-factor friendly a necessity for Microsoft? The company was caught off guard by a sudden netbook spike in popularity in 2008 that bit into its bottom line.

In its last quarterly earnings report in October, Microsoft pointed directly at explosive netbook sales in 2008 as one of the main reasons for sluggish year-over-year growth for Windows Vista. Because Vista's hardware requirements and licensing costs are too much for netbook OEMs, Microsoft had to get Windows XP running on netbooks to curb the Linux momentum, analysts say.

Initially, netbooks only ran Linux and the OS was able make significant headway before and after Microsoft put XP on them. Asus and Acer executives have been quoted recently as saying that Linux should sustain a netbook market share of 20 to 30 percent.

Linux Lacks Marketing Muscle
But despite reports from bloggers that Linux on netbooks could undercut Windows, industry analysts remain doubtful that Linux can keep up the netbook momentum now that these lightweight, inexpensive laptops have become more mainstream-particularly when the competition is Microsoft, a marketing giant.

"I don't think Microsoft is really worried about Linux on the client side," says Roger Kay, president of research and consulting firm, Endpoint Technologies. "Most attempts to get Linux moving on the client side have gone nowhere and I think its share of the netbook market will decline when Windows 7 arrives."

A bigger problem than Linux, says Kay, is that Microsoft is running "a trailing edge technology [Windows XP] on netbooks" and that Vista is too resource-heavy for that market.

"If Vista could be trimmed to run on netbooks, Microsoft would do it. But for now it must use old material with XP," Kay says.

Analyst Rob Enderle, president of technology research from The Enderle Group, agrees that Microsoft doesn't see Linux as much of a threat and that refocusing on the netbook market is more about "Microsoft addressing the problem of having to keep shipping Windows XP long after its expiration date."

Enderle says that getting XP on netbooks was clearly a response to Linux gaining traction, but that Microsoft is not afraid of consumers or OEMs having a preference for Linux.

"The problem was that Linux could run on a netbook and Vista couldn't, not any consumer or OEM love for Linux," he adds.

Will Google Bring Linux to Netbooks?
The netbook market is forecasted to stay red-hot. In December, research firm IDC raised its projection for global shipments of netbooks to 11.4 million units for 2008 and 21.5 million in 2009. Market research company DisplaySearch predicts that netbooks will own roughly 16 percent of the notebook PC market by 2011.

Microsoft is likely to promote Windows 7 on netbooks right away with full force. Kay says he expects Microsoft "to roll out a netbook-specific version of Windows 7 to keep the price point right and keep things proportional."

The only way for Linux stay in the game, says Enderle, is if a vendor with capital pushes a Linux-based OS on netbooks. Enderle mentioned that Google may just be the company for the job.

"No one has yet created something like the MacOS using Linux for a netbook, but the rumor is Google will do so shortly with Android," he says.

CIO.com is an InfoWorld affiliate.

1 in 3 Windows PCs vulnerable to worm attack

The worm that has infected several million Windows PCs is causing havoc because nearly a third of all systems remain unpatched 80 days after Microsoft rolled out an emergency fix, a security expert said Thursday.

Based on scans of several hundred thousand customer-owned Windows PCs, Qualys concluded that about 30 percent of the machines have not yet been patched with the "out of cycle" fix Microsoft provided Oct. 23 as security update MS08-067.

[ Related: Conficker malware ups the ante. | Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]

"The unpatched numbers went down significantly around the 30-day mark," said Wolfgang Kandek , Qualys' chief technology officer, "when less than 50 percent were unpatched. After that, it went down a little slower. As of yesterday, 30 percent of the machines are unpatched."

With nearly a third of all Windows systems still vulnerable, it's no surprise that the "Downadup" worm has been able to score such a success, Kandek said. "These slow [corporate] patch cycles are simply not acceptable," he said. "They lead directly to these high infection rates."

The Downadup worm, called "Conficker" by some researchers, surged dramatically this week and has infected an estimated 3.5 million PCs so far, according to Finnish security company F-Secure. The worm exploits a bug in the Windows Server service used in Windows 2000 , XP, Vista , Server 2003 and Server 2008.

Microsoft issued a patch in late October after confirming reports of in-the-wild attacks , most of them against machines in Asia.

On Tuesday, Microsoft laid at least some of the blame for the worm's success at the feet of Windows' users. "Either Security Update MS08-067 was not installed at all or was not installed on all the computers," said Cristian Craioveanu and Ziv Mador, researchers at Microsoft's Malware Protection Center, in a Tuesday blog post.

Kandek agreed with them. "This shows that a three-month patch cycle, which some companies use, is unacceptable," he said.

In related news, a researcher at McAfee said Thursday that the author of Downadup/Conficker worm took a shortcut when crafting the malware by grabbing functional exploit code from Metasploit, the open-source penetration testing framework.

"By using the exploit from the Metasploit module as the code base, a virus/worm programmer only needs to implement functions for automatic downloading and spreading," said Xiao Chen, a McAfee security researcher, in an entry to the company's blog . "We believe that this can be accomplished by an average programmer who understands the basics of exploitation and has decent programming skills.

"It's obvious that worm writers are abusing open source tools to their advantage to make their work easier," Chen added.

Microsoft has recommended that Windows users install the October update, then run the January edition of the Malicious Software Removal Tool to clean up compromised computers.

"Patch faster," urged Kandek from Qualys.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Browser wars deemed hot again

The browser wars are back. Dignitaries from major browser makers -- including Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, and newcomer Google -- served on a panel Thursday evening that discussed the apparent re-emergence of competition in the browser space after several years of dormancy.

(Apple, which offers the Safari browser, declined an invitation to participate, said Steve Wildstrom, moderator for the Churchill Club event in Palo Alto, Calif., and a columnist at BusinessWeek.)

While it appeared Microsoft's Internet Explorer had won the browser battle five years ago, things have changed with the advent of mobile browsers, Firefox and Safari, Wildstrom said. Panelists tackled questions such as balancing the need to innovate with the need to be compatible, as well as pondering security issues.

"I think we're nowhere close to done in terms of innovation in the browser," said Dean Hachamovitch, general manager for Internet Explorer at Microsoft. But challenges include handling innovation, interoperability, and security, he said.

"There's a broad set of things that people expect to just work," Hachamovitch said. Microsoft also has had to face the reality that it must ship a browser even while standards are still under construction.

"We're pretty sensitive to the needs of application developers," said Mozilla Vice President of Engineering Mike Shaver, citing enhancements for Firefox such as TraceMonkey, to boost JavaScript performance.

Google recently entered the browser fray with Chrome. "One thing that we ? were very specific about [with Chrome was]? that while we wanted to add more choice for users, we [did not want to] add another platform for developers," said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management at Google. Chrome features the WebKit open source browser engine also used in Safari, so Web site builders do not have to worry about accommodating another unfamiliar engine, he said.

[ Check out InfoWorld's lab test: Google Chrome vs. Internet Explorer 8. ]

Google's entry into the browser space arose from its building of applications and becoming concerned about the state of the browser platform, Pichai said.

Each of the panelists cited what they believed to be the uniqueness of their browser.

"Our claim to fame is that we're able to make a Web browser to run on anything," said Christen Krogh, chief development officer for Opera.

Chrome, Pichai said, offers a simple UI and speed. Internet Explorer, Hachamovitch said, at its core is focused on how real people use the Web.

"We try to deliver the right experience for a really broad spectrum of customers," such as consumers and developers, Hachamovitch said.

Mozilla's Firefox is a powerful tool for making sure the Web continues to be open, Shaver said. The Mozilla organization, meanwhile, is chartered not to make money and also serves as a differentiator. "We're chartered to protect the Internet and how people connect to it," Shaver said.

Hachamovitch said a test suite is being developed for Cascading Style Sheets 2.1. CSS provides for formatting of Web pages. "A test suite is a crucial thing," he said.

In the security space, the upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser offers a facility to protect from cross-site scripting attacks. "People's expectations for the browser are just going up and up and up," Hachamovitch said.

Pichai noted the impending release of Chrome for the Macintosh. "We're definitely working very hard on a Mac version," he said.

Intel, Microsoft, HP sued for alleged patent infringement

The feature to quickly recover data in PCs and Windows is under attack. Data recovery firm Xpoint earlier this week sued IT giants including Intel, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft for infringing on patents to quickly restore data in the event of corrupted hardware or software.

Xpoint's patents involve quick recovery of data from secondary storage in case data on primary storage is corrupted or damaged. Quick data recovery technology is widely used in products from PC makers like HP, Dell, and Lenovo for users to quickly restore the operating systems.

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

Xpoint is seeking unspecified monetary damages and injunctive relief from companies selling infringing products. The company owns two patents related to the data recovery: 7,024,581, which was issued in April 2006 and 7,430,686, which was issued in September 2008 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The lead inventor of the patents was Xpoint CEO Frank Wang, who worked for six years at IBM as a member of the core technology team that developed the first IBM PC, according to the complaint filed on Monday.

In the complaint, Xpoint said it failed to reach licensing agreements with Intel, Dell, and HP, which allegedly used knowledge of Xpoint's patents to implement data recovery features in their products.

Intel allegedly infringed on Xpoint's patents through data recovery technology used in its chipsets and motherboards. Intel used technology from Farstone Technology and Acronis, which Xpoint also sued.

Microsoft was also accused by Xpoint of infringing on patents with the System Restore feature in Windows Vista Home and Vista Basic. Similarly, Xpoint said backup and recovery features in Windows Vista Enterprise, Vista Business and Vista Ultimate infringed on its patents. HP and Dell were also accused of infringing on patents in Backup & Recovery Manager and One Button Restore features respectively.

The other companies filed by Xpoint include Gateway, Acer, and Toshiba.

Xpoint's lawyers declined further comment about the case. Intel couldn't be reached for comment.

Dell doesn't comment on pending litigation, said David Frink, a Dell spokesman.

Microsoft beta lets old Windows apps run on Vista

Microsoft has released the first public beta of a tool that solves one of the chief complaints businesses have with Windows Vista: that older Windows applications aren't compatible with the new OS.

The Microsoft's Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) lets people run legacy Windows applications, including those built for Windows 2000 and Windows XP, on Vista by using virtualization technology, according to a blog post on The Official MDOP Blog.

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

"Our primary goal was to deliver an enterprise virtualization solution for the compatibility challenges that IT teams have with some of their line-of-business applications, during the upgrade to new operating systems (like Windows Vista)," according to the post, attributed to Ran Oelgiesser, a MED-V senior product manager. "With MED-V 1.0, you can easily create, deliver and centrally manage virtual Windows XP or 2000 environments (based on Microsoft Virtual PC 2007), and help your users to run legacy applications on their Windows Vista desktops."

By using MED-V in this way, people don't have to test or migrate applications that before would have been incompatible with Vista before running them on the OS, saving companies money and time, he added.

To get the MED-V beta, people can sign up on the Microsoft Connect site.

The final release of the software is expected later this year, according to the post. Microsoft acquired the MED-V technology when it closed its purchase of Kidaro last May. In fact, it is included in a larger software package called the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, which rolls up several Microsoft virtualization acquisitions. In addition to Kidaro, the pack is comprised of software from Microsoft's purchases of Softricity, AssetMetrix, Winternals Software, and DesktopStandard.

Microsoft is investing heavily in desktop- and application-virtualization technology as a way to alleviate compatibility issues that have especially hampered the adoption of Vista. Many businesses opted to skip Vista and continue to run Windows XP until Vista's follow-up release, Windows 7, is available, and application-compatibility was one of several factors affecting their decision.

Microsoft just released the first Windows 7 beta last week, and some expect the final release of the OS as early as August or September, although Microsoft has not given a firm date for when it will be finished.

Early reports from Windows 7 beta users are that the OS is more stable, runs faster and is more secure than Vista, and improves on some of the user-interface features Microsoft introduced in that OS. Some are even suggesting that Microsoft not charge a fee, or charge very little, for Windows 7, since Vista should have the same high quality in the first place.

HP injects Adaptive Infrastructure with orchestration, recovery

Hewlett-Packard on Thursday added tools for orchestration and recovery to its Adaptive Infrastructure portfolio. And, as with most enterprise-class technology announcements these days, HP said that the new tools promise IT cost-savings and reduced risks.

HP enhanced its Insight Dynamics VSE, software for managing physical and virtual resources alike, with the new Insight Orchestration and Insight Recovery tools, the company said.

[ HP debuted Adaptive Infrastructure as a green storage technology ]

"We're starting to integrate a lot of the pieces of technology already in datacenters to drive down costs and allow greater agility for our customers," says Duncan Campbell, vice president of Adaptive Infrastructure at HP. "The reason we have this sense of urgency is because too much of IT budgets goes toward support and maintenance."

Insight Orchestration enables administrators to create templates for infrastructure needed to run different applications on servers, including associated storage and network resources, and includes a portal and workflow engine for implementation, HP said. Insight Recovery, meanwhile, is for restarting applications running at a remote backup site and is integrated with HP's StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array.

HP also enhanced Insight Dynamics VSE with capacity-planning functions including software for collecting and analyzing utilization data from Dell, IBM, and other Windows servers and support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, VMware ESXi, and ESX.?

"The general point is that AI has mostly been about plumbing and infrastructure pieces, and this brings more orchestration and automation," explains Jonathan Eunice, principal IT advisor at Illuminata. "With virtual machines, people are accepting the idea of taking humans out of the loop."

Removing humans is exactly where Eunice sees the promise of cost-savings coming to fruition. "All of the investments I see are really about consolidation and taking labor out of the equation," Eunice explains. "Any investment in consolidation and virtualization can take costs out."

Insight Orchestration and Insight Recovery, HP said, kick off an increased concentration for this year on the company's AI portfolio. The company also said it has opened four new Adaptive Infrastructure Discovery Centers in Isle d?Abeau, France, Boeblingen, Germany, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Houston, in addition to five existing centers.?

Report: Microsoft considers major job cuts

Microsoft may start a "significant" round of layoffs as early as next week, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal Thursday.

Citing unnamed sources it claimed were familiar with Microsoft's plans, the newspaper said the company is considering "significant work force reductions" across multiple divisions, but did not specify the number of workers who would be affected.

[ 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. ]

And the Journal hedged its bets somewhat. "Plans for the cutbacks are still in flux and Microsoft could end up finding alternative methods of reining in costs," the paper reported.

If Microsoft does announce layoffs, it would join other big-name technology companies that have recently scaled back employee head-counts, including Google and Oracle. The former said today that it is laying off 100 recruiters and closing engineering offices in Texas, Norway, and Sweden, while the latter reportedly made "major" cuts in its workforce last week, with more in the offing.

Rumors of possible layoffs at Microsoft have been circulating for weeks, with the number 15,000 most often cited as a target for any reduction.

Rob Helm, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft, a research company that focuses on the Redmond developer, doesn't think large cuts are likely. "I don't think we'll see any major layoffs next week," said Helm, referring to the run-up to Thursday, when Microsoft is scheduled to reveal its earnings for the past quarter. "The company always has a rolling layoff and that may accelerate."

Microsoft tends to regularly reorganize its operational divisions and working teams, Helm continued, with the idea that the lowest-rated workers in the company's review system are then shoved out the door. "When the company reorganizes, some people don't have chairs when the music stops," said Helm. "We may see some more of that activity."

Historically, Microsoft has steered well clear of massive layoffs. In Helm's memory, for instance, the largest was a drop of some 600 employees in the Microsoft TV group during the dot.com bust early in the century. "But that was more about scaling back and refocusing," Helm argued, not layoffs for their own sake.

That's not to say Microsoft doesn't face the same pressure that's been driving other major technology companies to shed jobs. "The reality is that Microsoft has to protect its margins, and some of the highest-margin customers, like those in the financial sector, are really hurting. [Microsoft] has to keep costs under control, too," Helm said.

How the company handles any cutbacks is the question, said Helm. His take: "I expect that next week [during the earnings call] Microsoft will announce what it's already doing to keep costs under control, and ... that will be to manage out people, cut some small business units and clear out the dead wood."

Microsoft declined to comment on the Wall Street Journal report. "Microsoft does not comment on rumors or speculation," a spokeswoman said today in an e-mail reply to questions.

Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Palm request for app store advice opens floodgate

Andrew Shebanow didn't imagine that asking for feedback about how Palm's app store should work would open up a flood of input. He also didn't expect the move would change his job description. But now both have happened.

On Jan. 8, Shebanow, who is working on a third-party application distribution system for Palm's new operating system, posted an item on his blog looking for input from developers on how that system should work. He threw out a few questions, such as: how should application updating and installation work; should Palm offer payment processing or leave it to third parties; should application trials be available; and how should Palm handle featured applications.

[ Interested in whether its new webOS operating system can help Palm regain its dominant position in the handheld market? Check out Neil McAllister's Fatal Exception blog. ]

By Wednesday, he had removed the post, replacing it with one saying that its popularity had caught him and Palm by surprise. "My boss has asked me to hide the post while management decides what they want me to do about it," he wrote.

Now, Shebanow has posted another note saying that the discussion about how the app store should work will be allowed to continue, but at Palm's new developer blog. In addition, Shebanow has been volunteered to work on developer outreach.

The incident and the reactions of developers along the way are a sign of just how far the mobile software industry has come but also an indication that developers hope it will continue to evolve.

Initial reaction to the first blog post was excitement that Palm would be asking for input. One person wrote: "I love your oneness with this matter. I wish Apple allowed posts like these." Apple has sometimes been criticized by iPhone developers who complain that Apple doesn't communicate well with them.

That was followed by dismay when the post was pulled. "The post might have been slightly troublesome or concerning to your bosses in some ways - fine! Strike out some of the sentences, revise it (in a transparent manner if you need to) but don't pull it when it was just getting Palm accolades by doing things in a more open way!" one person wrote.

The legitimate suggestions about how the app store should work are telling too. Many of the suggestions to the first blog post, still available through Google's cache, recommend that the Palm app store feature improvements on the way Apple's iPhone App Store works. Apple's system was revolutionary in the mobile industry, opening up development to essentially anyone and letting iPhone users buy and download applications directly to their phones.

But, as some people commenting on Shebanow's blog point out, the iPhone process has some downsides. One is that developers have to pay $100 to join the developers' program; people on the blog suggested that Palm's program be free.

Another request was for the Palm store to allow trial downloads so that users can be sure they want an application before paying for it. The iPhone App Store doesn't have a mechanism for allowing trials.

One person suggested that Palm rank applications by quality as a way to make it easier for users to find good applications. That could solve a new problem with the iPhone store where it's grown difficult to find great applications since there are now over 10,000 available.

Palm introduced its new operating system, webOS, and the first phone to run it, the Pre, at the Consumer Electronics Show last week. The phone is expected to become available some time in the first half of the year and Palm has revealed only minor details about its planned application store.

Maybe it's because the new Palm OS is based on Linux, but it appears that developers are hopeful for a more open environment than Apple is offering. Wrote one developer: "Anarchy! We want Anarchy. We don't want anyone to tell us what or how we can do anything. The only rule is NO RULES. We want you to distribute our apps, but we don't want to pay for it!!!! Nothing, nada, zilch. And we want the ability to JAILBREAK! Wheeeeeee!!!!!!"

Windows encryption programs open to kernel hack

Many popular Windows encryption programs that hide files inside mounted volumes could be fatally compromised by a new type of attack uncovered by a German researcher.

According to a paper published by Bern Roellgen, who also works for encryption software outfit PMC Ciphers, such OTFE (on-the-fly-encryption) programs typically pass the password and file path information in the clear to a device driver through a Windows programming function called DevicelOControl.

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

Although it is impossible for a malicious program to get hold of this data directly -- a competently written encryption program will overwrite memory locations caching this data -- it could be retrieved if the attacker has found a way to compromise the Windows kernel itself.

Dubbed, the Mount IOCTL (input/output control) Attack by Roellgen, an attacker would need to substitute a modified version of the DevicelOControl function that is part of the kernel with one able to log I/O control codes in order to find the one used by an encryption driver. Once found, the plaintext passphrase used to encrypt and decrypt a mounted volume would be vulnerable.

As simple as it sounds, how easy would such an attack be in real-world conditions? The key elements are the ability in the first instance to burrow into the Windows kernel without being detected in the manner of a super-rootkit, and then find the probably unique control code used by the encryption program, neither of which would be easy, but are at least theoretically possible.

"As this kind of attack has so far been unknown, it is very likely that all disk encryption products which mount virtual volumes are affected," said Roellgen by e-mail.

"Instead of patenting the countermeasure it is probably better to spread the news as good as possible and to give other programmers the chance to strengthen their software. To be honest, I would not trust any disk encryption software that hands out keying material so easily to the OS anymore."

Roellgen's solution to the issue is to use a Diffie-Helman key exchange setup between the driver and the encryption application.

Roellgen has a record for finding vulnerabilities in encryption technologies. Last October, he published details of way to "see" image files inside encrypted backup files, while earlier in the year his company, PMC Ciphers, invented a novel method for defeating keyloggers with a high degree of certainty.

Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Salesforce launches Service Cloud

Salesforce has repurposed the customer-service software acquired through its August 2008 purchase of InstraNet into a new offering called the Service Cloud, the company announced Thursday.

The package seeks to combine traditional call-center features with aspects of search engine technology and social-networking sites like Facebook.

"Customers today are looking to the cloud for answers," said Alex Dayon, senior vice president of customer service and support at Salesforce.

[ For InfoWorld's complete definition of cloud computing, see "What cloud computing really means." ]

Salesforce believes cloud-based customer service is "the next billion-dollar opportunity" for the company, Dayon added.

The company is basing the Service Cloud on a group of core elements: online customer communities; social networks; improving search engine results; sharing knowledge base information with partners; and making data from the cloud available to traditional e-mail, phone and chat-based customer service representatives. The software is organized via a central dashboard interface showing activity in the various channels.

A Salesforce demonstration shows a customer question-and-answer application that the telecom company Orange created for Facebook. Once an answer received a set number of positive votes, the information was automatically pushed from Facebook into Salesforce, where an administrator could decide whether it should be included in the company's central knowledge base and accessible to all customer service channels.

The InstraNet code is working under the hood of the Service Cloud, handling content provisioning and workflow, Dayon said. "You can see all those engines in action blended into the technology," he said.

InstraNet's application was on-premises. Customers who wish to retain that deployment model will be supported as long as they like, but Salesforce is finding that many are starting to embrace the cloud model, Dayon said.

Service Cloud pricing starts at $995 per month.

Obama inauguration: Be there without being there

The inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States is arguably one of the biggest -- and certainly most-anticipated -- events in the country's history. It's also one that very few people will be able to attend in person. For those who get to be there, Washington, D.C., will be a madhouse, and the experience will be fraught with hassles (like finding a restroom). Fortunately, the media coverage will be massive and multifaceted, so experiencing the event from afar may not be so bad. I'll suggest some media resources new and old to give you a taste of what it's like to be there.

You still can't beat good old TV for pure visual quality. While many of my suggestions below involve a computer and the Internet, it's a good idea to have a TV on in the background if you can. Turn the sound off, and keep the remote handy. (I'll say a little more about the TV coverage below.)

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

For reference, take a look at the entire Inauguration Program, including Tuesday's schedule of events.

CNN and Facebook partnership
Some of the best tools I've found for following political events are the ones that mix video and social-networking features.

The one that I'll start with on inauguration day is a Web 2.0 service created by CNN and Facebook. At the site, you can watch the CNN video feeds and use Facebook to comment on the goings-on and comment on your friends' comments. You can also link to various sources of media coverage, or post images. All of this will happen at CNN.com Live. The CNN/Facebook coverage begins at 8 a.m. EST, with the swearing-in ceremony at 12 p.m. EST, followed immediately by Obama's inauguration speech.

Though broadcasters can air only one video feed at a time on a single TV channel, they will likely have four or five separate crews on the ground in D.C. creating multiple other feeds. Often at sites such as CNN's, you can choose which feed you want to watch at a given time, and switch around. Advantage: Web video.

NBC (through MSNBC), CBS, Fox, and the New York Times also will be providing live video streaming of the inauguration.

Watch it on the big screen
MSNBC and a chain of movie theaters (Screenvision) have arranged for MSNBC's live coverage of the event to be shown on the big screen in select major cities (27 of them in 21 major markets). To find out if your city is among the group, visit MSNBC Events. If you plan on attending, you will need to RSVP at the site. The show will run from 11:30 a.m. EST to 3:30 p.m. EST.

The most "accessible" inauguration ever
Obama's inaugural committee has pledged to make his January 20 inauguration the most "accessible" in U.S. history, but does that apply to those folks who can't (or choose not to) be there, too?

Actually, yes. The Obama organization has become a media machine in its own right, and that machine will fire up once again for inauguration day. Here are some of the media types it'll be using.

The official Inaugural YouTube group already has numerous videos posted in advance of the event, but the real reason for tuning in there is the possibility of seeing some behind-the-scenes footage shot and uploaded by members of Obama's staff. We saw some interesting footage that was shot just before Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention in Denver last summer.

Of course, the setup also has a social element. If you are a YouTube member, you can log in and join the Presidential Inaugural Committee group; afterward, if you wish, you can post your own videos or comment on the ones that are up.

The Obama team has a fetish for text messaging, as everyone saw throughout the campaign, and the organization is at it again with the inauguration. The Obama people will be sending out text messages (and e-mail) to people attending the inauguration, starting before the weekend and continuing through Tuesday. These messages, the Obama people say, will be updates on events happening throughout the capital. It might be fun to sign up for the updates and pretend you're there.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee will also be updating a Flickr photo stream throughout the day.

Twittering the inauguration
The Obama team hasn't forgotten its Twitter-using friends, either. The "Official Presidential Inaugural Committee" Twitter group gives you a way to do your own play-by-play of the event, and to mix it up with other Twitterers. The group has about 3000 "followers" at the time of this writing, and it will probably grow over the weekend.

If you're sitting at your desk at work, remember that Twitter can be a significant time-sink. On the plus side, using Twitter is a great way to read about the inauguration-day experiences of nonmedia types.

NPR and citizen journalism
Speaking of citizen journalism, NPR and Current.tv have established a couple of tags for people to use while microblogging before and during the inauguration. Thousands of people on their way to D.C. are already tweeting and labeling their tweets with the "#dctrip09" tag. Another tag, "#inaug09", is for microblogger use during the inaugural ceremonies. By searching for these tags on Twitter, you can follow the all the microblogs. The tags can be used on other sites, like Flickr and YouTube, too, so you can follow the photo and video submissions of the inauguration over there, as well.

Try the hometown paper
For the best inauguration day coverage, it's a good idea to turn to the Washington Post, which will be offering a hometown perspective on the inauguration. Not only is the Post covering the event up close, it also has a lot of multimedia tools to convey what being there in person is like.

And you can get to the info in one click: The Post has a great team of interactive-news producers, and this time they've come up with a special inauguration-coverage widget that you can install on your Web page or blog and click throughout the day. It's not a live stream of information; rather, it refreshes frequently, every time news happens.

If you'll be at work on inauguration day, you might find this a handy little tool to have around. One good strategy is to click on the Post's link every now and then before noon eastern time, and then tune in (on TV, or at CNN.com or another Webcaster) for the swearing-in and Obama's speech.

Local Web 2.0 sites
I also found a couple of lesser-known mashup sites that are designed to help visitors to Washington, D.C., make sense of it all on inauguration weekend. They're fun to use from afar to get some local color, too.

The first, Navigating Washington, provides a map of the area, with flags marking the locations of events throughout the weekend. Each clickable flag provides a pop-up box containing further information about the event. The site also has a cool feature that allows you to read notes from people from around the world on their way to D.C., describing their experience. A mobile version of the site lets visitors get information while they're moving around in the city.

The second, DC Historic Tours, provides a proper warm-up for anyone preparing for a trip to the city. Among other things, it offers a detailed map view of the inaugural parade route, with pop-up information about landmarks along the way.

Step one: Turn on the TV
Because this is such a huge transition year for the presidency, the TV networks are entering full-court-press mode in covering the event. I won't go into specific coverage schedules here because the schedules are still being announced (consult your local listings), but suffice it to say that any time you might want your inauguration fix starting Sunday evening, one of the major networks will be doing something.

Notably, HBO has purchased exclusive rights to air the inauguration-week kickoff ceremony Sunday night at the Lincoln Memorial. The event will feature a long list of performing artists and luminaries, including the president-elect himself and vice president-elect Joe Biden. HBO will televise the event on an open signal, meaning that cable and satellite subscribers across the country will be able to watch the coverage whether they pay for HBO or not. We're hearing that the ceremony will also be streamed live over the Internet, but that has not been confirmed.

CBS, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, and ABC will be broadcasting live from the inauguration ceremony Sunday, and for most of the day Tuesday, when most will cover the motorcade ride, the swearing-in, Obama's speech, and much of the parade.

If you don't care for the infotainment the networks offer, you can count on C-SPAN for its no-nonsense approach. C-SPAN's coverage is right down the center--and very unlikely to dramatize or play up any aspect of the inauguration. You can also watch the C-SPAN coverage online.

Tuning in while mobile
You have several options if you find yourself on the go during the inauguration. And by the looks of things, many more people will be watching in this way than ever before.

MobiTV, which provides mobile content to 20 mobile networks, including AT&T, Alltel, and Sprint, says it is busy beefing up its servers for a big mobile-traffic load on Tuesday. The company says its mobile-TV service saw record numbers of subscribers during the presidential debates, and it expects a similar subscription rate for the inauguration.

Of course, other mobile video providers are around (MobiTV competes with Qualcomm's MediaFLO and nontraditional services like SlingPlayer Mobile), but MobiTV's numbers are a testament to the idea that America is increasingly watching live TV events on mobile devices. So if you're out and about on inauguration day, chances are pretty high that you can find decent coverage of the event as part of your mobile video package.

PC World is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Micro Focus shows way to extend Cobol to the cloud

There's life in legacy Cobol applications yet. A new offering from Micro Focus will enable companies to use applications written in the language within cloud computing environments.

The company has announced that Micro Focus Enterprise Cloud Services will support Amazon EC2 platform, the company announced support for Microsoft's Azure Platform last month.

[ For InfoWorld's complete definition of cloud computing, see "What cloud computing really means." | Find out why Cobol skills could translate into job security and a steady employment future. ]

"We're pleased to see Micro Focus use of Amazon Web Services to further enable companies of all sizes to take advantage of the cloud," said Steve Rabuchin, Amazon Web Services director of developer relations and business development. "By leveraging Amazon EC2, Micro Focus is bringing their customers the scalable and highly available web infrastructure that they require."

Not only will this extend the life of legacy applications within enterprises but it could provide a new revenue source for ISVs, said Mark Haynie, CTO for application modernisation at Micro Focus. "If you're an ISV and have developed an inventory application and use Micro Focus Cobol, you can use and package that application to customers as a hosted application -- this could be a new distribution channel for ISVs," he said.

Haynie said that the technology would offer a way for companies to use a lot of existing applications without the need for rewriting them.

"If an application is working perfectly, what is the reason to rewrite it in a new language," he said. "I used to be an engineer and I wouldn't be pleased if I'd been asked to rewrite a program in a new language even though the old one was working perfectly."

He said that this approach chimes in perfectly with Micro Focus's philosophy. "We have a saying -- re-use is more important than re-write." He added that even though cloud computing was a newer technology, there was still plenty of scope to incorporate older languages such as Cobol. "We believe that cloud computing is not about languages but about services. If applications have been written in Cobol, then they can be used in cloud."

He said that Micro Focus was keen to support all manifestations of cloud computing. "We're cloud-agnostic: you don't have to be worried about opting for Amazon or Microsoft Azure; we know that cloud is just another platform, Haynie said.

Micro Focus has not yet announced pricing for product. "We have made no announcement on pricing yet. That's been deliberate; we are still working with our early adopters on this and are looking to make an announcement at Micro Focus World later this year.

Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

Friday, January 16, 2009

IT News HeadLines (InfoWorld) 16/01/2009

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