Microsoft offers tool to calculate carbon footprint
A new environmental toolset for Microsoft's Dynamics AX enterprise resource management software lets businesses find out the carbon footprint of various aspects of their operations.
The free toolset, called the Environmental Sustainability Dashboard, is aimed at letting small to medium-size businesses figure out their environmental impact without having to pay for outside consultants, according to Microsoft.
[ Stay up to date on green tech with InfoWorld's Sustainable IT blog, with our Green Tech Topic Center, and with the Green Tech newsletter. ]
The software covers four metrics: direct energy consumption, such as of usage of natural gas on site; indirect energy consumption, such as electricity purchased from a third party; greenhouse gas emissions from an organization's total energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from commuting and business travel.
The metrics are based on guidelines from the Global Reporting Initiative, which develops ways to measure environmental sustainability.
Microsoft said the dashboard will let businesses choose good environmental practices as well as let them make adjustments to reduce exposure to fluctuating energy prices.
The dashboard has been designed to work with SharePoint, Microsoft's collaboration and portal software. The dashboard's components also integrate into so-called "role centers" in Dynamics, which are customized views used to manage different kinds of information for different jobs.
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Kaspersky, OpenDNS collaborate to slow Conficker worm
OpenDNS has added a feature to its Domain Name System (DNS) services to fight a widespread worm, with help from Russian security company Kaspersky Lab.
OpenDNS has its own network of DNS servers that translate domain names into IP (Internet Protocol) addresses so, for example, Web sites can be displayed in a browser. The company says its system is faster than using the DNS servers run by ISPs (Internet service providers) and provides better protection against phishing as well as other features such as Web content filtering.
[ Related: 1 in 3 Windows PCs vulnerable to worm attack | Conficker malware ups the ante. | Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]
OpenDNS is now using a list of Web sites supplied by Kaspersky Lab that the Conficker worm calls on to update itself. The worm, also known as Kido and Downandup, is believed to have infected up to 10 million PCs by exploiting a vulnerability in Microsoft's Windows Server Service, despite Microsoft issuing an emergency patch last October.
Conficker contains an algorithm that generates dozens of new domain names daily. The hackers controlling Conficker can register one of those domain names and then put instructions or updates for the malware on the Web site for Conficker to download when it checks in.
The problem is that no one knows which Web site will be activated next, or when. However, the algorithm has been cracked by Kaspersky, so they know which Web sites could potentially go live.
The mechanism is also used by other botnet controllers. It's difficult for security professionals to stop, although one security company recently went to the trouble of registering all the potential domain names in order to block updates for a different botnet.
OpenDNS is working around that problem by taking a list of potential domains from Kaspersky that Conficker could call on and not allowing them to resolve. That means if a PC using OpenDNS is infected with Conficker, the malware should not be able to update itself. However, the malware will still be on the PC.
OpenDNS also added a Botnet Protection feature to its service, which will alert administrators if they have a machine which is infected.
Conficker has proven to be one of the most serious worms in recent memory. Infections have spread rapidly since last year. Systems become infected when a hacker constructs a malicious Remote Procedure Call (RPC) to an unpatched server, which then allows arbitrary code to run on a machine. Conficker also uses other methods to spread, including trying to copy itself to other shared network machines by guessing passwords
So far, Conficker's controllers haven't done anything malicious with the botnet. Security analysts are watching the situation closely because of the botnet's enormous size, which may have spooked its controllers from trying to use it for denial-of-service attacks or sending spam.
OpenDNS's services are free. The company makes money by showing advertisements alongside search results if someone enters an invalid domain name. However, OpenDNS will fix typos in domain names if the service can guess which site someone intends to visit.
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AMD's Phenom II makes early move to DDR3
Advanced Micro Devices on Monday released some multicore desktop PC processors that work with a faster memory type, promising a boost in system performance.
The company's Phenom II quad-core and triple-core chips include DDR3 memory controllers, which allow data to be passed between the CPU and memory faster than existing DDR2 controllers. Aimed at mainstream desktops, the chips run at speeds from 2.5GHz to 2.8GHz and include various cache sizes.
[ Stay ahead of advances in hardware technology with InfoWorld's Ahead of the Curve blog and newsletter. ]
The support for DDR3 comes earlier than anticipated . Late last year AMD said it would support the faster memory type by the middle of 2009, but it also said it might bring that forward depending on memory prices and other factors.
AMD is taking an early step to incorporate DDR3 as the industry prepares for a broad transition from DDR2, said Dean McCarron, principal analyst at Mercury Research. The more affordable DDR2 memory dominates the PC market, but a full transition to DDR3 may occur by the middle of 2010, McCarron said.
The Phenom II chips will also work with DDR2 chips for users who want a more cost-effective memory option, said David Schwarzbach, senior manager of platform marketing at AMD. DDR3 memory today can cost as much as three times more than DDR2 chips, Schwarzbach said.
The processors will plug into new AM3 sockets to communicate with DDR3 modules installed on the motherboard. Motherboard companies such as Asustek Computer have already announced AM3-compatible motherboards. The new CPUs also work with AMD's AM2+ motherboard sockets, which support only DDR2 memory.
The first Phenom II chips were introduced last month. The processors are manufactured using a 45-nanometer process.
The new additions include the quad-core Phenom II X4 910, which runs at 2.6GHz with 8MB of cache, and the 800-series quad-core processors, which run at between 2.5GHz and 2.6GHz and have 6MB of cache. Pricing for only one of those chips was available, the X4 810 at 2.6GHz, which costs $175.
The triple-core processors are new to the Phenom II lineup. The X3 720 runs at 2.8GHz and the X3 710 runs at 2.6GHz, and both have 7.5MB of cache. They are priced at $145 and $125, respectively. The triple-core processors are quad-core chips with one of the cores disabled, Schwarzbach said.
Tweaks in the core and cache allow AMD to offer more performance at similar price points to its earlier chips, McCarron said.
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Toshiba develops higher bandwidth FeRAM
Toshiba has developed a higher capacity version of its FeRAM (Ferroelectric RAM) memory that can send and receive data at eight times the speed of its previously detailed prototype.
FeRAM is a relatively new type of memory that combines the speed of DRAM chips, which are most commonly used as the main memory in computers, and the ability to retain data while power is off like flash memory chips used in cell phones, cameras, and other gadgets. It's been under development for years but has yet to see wide-scale production.
[ Stay ahead of advances in hardware technology with InfoWorld's Ahead of the Curve blog and newsletter. ]"
The new chip, which will be detailed at this week's International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, has a capacity of 16MBs and a read/write speed of 1.6GB per second. Toshiba last detailed its FeRAM progress in 2006 when it had a 4MB chip that managed 200MBps data transfer.
The chip to be detailed at ISSCC this week is the latest in a series of prototypes from the company, which is working towards a possible commercialization of the technology. The company has no concrete plans to begin mass producing the chips and says price remains one of the biggest obstacles.
Target applications include on-chip cache memory in semiconductors. While it supports fast read and write and can keep its contents even when powered off the overall capacity of the chip, at 16MBs, is much lower than a conventional flash memory chip.
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'My Phone' online storage coming soon for Windows Mobile
Microsoft has revealed some details of a forthcoming service that will allow Windows Mobile users to synchronize information between their phone and the Web.
The service, called My Phone, will provide a place to store data such as photos, videos, text messages, and calendar items. Users will then be able to share that data with others or use the service as a way to back up information on their phone.
[ Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]
A description of My Phone appeared earlier Friday at getskybox.com, but Microsoft pulled the site after several blogs wrote stories about it. Getskybox.com now redirects to a new URL that has much of the same description.
Getskybox.com went live earlier than planned, and Microsoft will offer more details about My Phone at the Mobile World Congress trade show in mid-February, said a Microsoft spokesman. The service will be available at that time as a limited, invitation-only beta, he said.
Microsoft already has a service that does something similar to My Phone. Live Mesh lets people upload photos and other information to a Web page and access the data from a mobile phone.
But My Phone may be different because it will automatically synch a wide array of information from phones. In addition, while anyone with a phone and a browser can use Live Mesh, My Phone will be limited to people using phones with Windows Mobile 6.
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Mac clone maker wins legal round against Apple
A federal judge last week ruled that Psystar can continue its countersuit against Apple , giving the Mac clone maker a rare win in its seven-month-old battle with Apple.
He also hinted that if Psystar proves its allegations, others may then be free to sell computers with Mac OS X already installed.
[ Discover the key Mac and Apple tech trends for business users. Read InfoWorld's Enterprise Mac blog and newsletter. ]
In an order signed on Friday, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup gave Psystar the go-ahead to amend its lawsuit against Apple. According to Alsup, Psystar may change that countersuit, which originally accused Apple of breaking antitrust laws , to instead ague that Apple has stretched copyright laws by tying the Mac operating system to its hardware.
Alsup had tossed Psystar's antitrust charges in November 2008, but left the door open to a modified complaint. Psystar took advantage of the opportunity, and filed a revised lawsuit in mid-December. Apple, however, had hoped to quash Psystar's revision, saying that the Florida company "attempts to repackage its dismissed antitrust allegations under the guise of copyright misuse."
On Friday, Alsup said that Psystar could continue to press its once-dismissed case. "Psystar may well have a legitimate interest in establishing misuse [of copyright] independent of Apple's claims against it -- for example, to clarify the risks it confronts by marketing the products at issue in this case or others it may wish to develop," Alsup said in his ruling.
Apple started the legal wrangling in July when it said Psystar broke copyright and software-licensing laws by selling Intel-based computers with Mac OS X 10.5 preinstalled. Psystar has been selling machines equipped with Apple's operating system since April 2008.
Alsup also said that if Psystar proves that Apple abused copyright laws, some of Apple's charges against the company would be moot. He also seemed to say that that others would then be free to follow in Psystar's footsteps. "Moreover, if established, misuse would bar enforcement (for the period of misuse) not only as to defendants who are actually party to the challenged license but also as to potential defendants not themselves injured by the misuse who may have similar interests," said Alsup in his ruling.
The judge did not name the "potential defendants," but in previous filings, Apple has claimed that Psystar was not acting alone . "Persons other than Psystar are involved in Psystar's unlawful and improper activities described in this amended complaint," said Apple in a November filing. At the time, Apple only referred to those individuals or corporations as John Does 1 through 10.
Apple said it would reveal the names when it uncovered them.
Alsup also acknowledged Apple's argument that it had the right to decide how its software was licensed and used, but said that that would have to be decided as the case plays out. He did reject Psystar's attempt to include state unfair competition charges to its countersuit, however.
Psystar has a week to submit its altered counterclaims, after which Apple must answer within 20 days. Alsup also told the two parties to get to work. "Both sides should be taking discovery and preparing themselves for trial and/or summary judgment," the judge concluded.
The case is currently scheduled to begin trial on Nov. 9.
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Should Microsoft simplify XP-to-Win-7 upgrades?
When Windows 7 is released later this year or in early 2010, many PC users who upgrade will be coming from Windows XP. Unlike Vista users, they can't do an "in-place upgrade," in which the new OS overwrites the old one, preserving their installed applications, preferences, and data. Instead, they'll have to do a clean install, which means they have to back up their data, install Win 7 (either deleting or XP or installing as a separate environment), reinstall their apps, restore their data, and re-create their preferences.
For Windows XP users who avoided Vista because of its many problems, that upgrade work may seem as adding insult to injury, making it harder for them to finally adopt a new version of Windows. Through its PR agency, Microsoft confirms to InfoWorld that there will be no "in-place upgrade" option for XP users, but it declines to explain why not. "More materials on your question are in the works," the spokesman says.
[ Can your PC run Windows 7? Find out with InfoWorld's free Windows Sentinel compatibility checker. | See our experts' first looks at Windows 7. ]
Why a clean-install requirement may make sense
But there may be good reason not to support an in-place upgrade, suggests Michael Silver, a Gartner analyst who follows Microsoft technologies. That's because viruses, registry errors, and other performance-sapping flaws in the user's Windows environment would be carried over into Windows 7; something that would not happen with a clean install.
Business IT typically does clean installs on user systems to avoid these issues, Silver notes, so the lack of an in-place upgrade will be a nonissue for most enterprises.
Consumers and small businesses are the ones who tend to prefer the in-place upgrade option, Silver notes, and they're the ones who may be annoyed by the clean-install requirement if coming from XP. "Microsoft is in a bit of a no-win situation here: Support the upgrade and live with whatever bad experiences users have or don?t support the upgrade and make it harder for people to do it," Silver says.
"Most users will be better off doing the clean install anyway," he says, so he recommends that even Vista users avoid the in-place upgrade and proceed to the clean install.
Silver also notes that users who did not upgrade to Vista often have hardware that can't run Windows 7 or Vista (typically, PCs from 2006 or earlier), so they would likely get a new computer at the same time with Windows 7 preinstalled, which means reinstalling their apps, preferences, and data anyhow.
A precedent for providing in-place upgrades for earlier generations
When Microsoft shipped Windows Vista, it offered XP users the choice of an in-place upgrade or a clean install, but users of earlier Windows versions could do only a clean install. So the requirement for Windows XP and earlier users to do a clean install of Windows 7 follows that precedent.
But when Microsoft shipped Windows XP in late 2001, it gave not only users of the predecessor Windows 2000 but also users of the earlier generations (Windows 98, Windows Millennium, and Windows 98 Second Edition) the in-place upgrade option. In some ways, the situation then was similar to that situation today. Microsoft Millennium was a technical failure that customers avoided, causing Microsoft to issue Windows 98 SE. Then came Windows 2000, replacing the OS kernel and much of the architecture, which meant it needed newer hardware and was incompatible with many peripherals and applications. So most users stuck with Windows 98 or 98 SE, and Microsoft eased the path to XP by allowing in-place upgrades for them all.
Technically, the shift from Windows Vista to Windows 7 is small, so it should be easier to support an in-place upgrade from XP to Windows 7 than it was from Windows 98 to Windows XP. But Silver cites the performance and security issues that an in-place upgrade preserves as a reason that Microsoft may have chosen not to do so this time.
Silver contrasts Microsoft's situation with that of Apple, which lets users do an in-place upgrade three versions back (from Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, 10.3 Panther, and 10.4 Tiger) to the current Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. "This is an area -- efficiency, ease, and success of upgrade -- where Apple has an edge," he notes, due to its greater control over the hardware and the more focused reach of the OS.
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The incredible shrinking operating system
From the software concept called JeOS (pronounced "juice"), the Just Enough OS, to hardware concepts like Celio RedFly, an 8-inch screen and keyboard device running applications off a smartphone via a USB or a Bluetooth connection, there are an increasing number of indications that the center of gravity is shifting away from the traditional massive operating systems of the past.
Even the major OS vendors themselves are saying that the next versions of their OS -- Windows 7, Linux in its many distributions, and Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard -- are getting a smaller footprint.
[ Get the latest on the forthcoming Windows 7 and Mac OS X Snow Leopard OSes. ]
There are many reasons for the traditional OS to shrink and for new OSes to start small, but two stand out:
One, a smaller code base is easier to manage and secure than a large one. For example, estimates for Vista's development costs run around $6 billion, and BusinessWeek has estimated that 10,000 employees spent about five years developing it.
Two, a smaller OS can run on a greater variety of devices, and as netbooks, smartphones, and new devices such as the iPod Touch gain traction, the benefit of a smaller OS becomes hard to ignore. Today, Microsoft's Windows Mobile is a separate code base from the desktop Windows, while Apple's iPhone OS is a both a subset of and extension of the Mac OS. In both cases, that adds a lot of work for their companies and for application developers. And it means that customers must support an unwieldy number of operating systems.
What Microsoft, Apple, and the Linux community are up to
"Ideally, we want to see Windows 7 run across a spectrum of hardware: small, standard, or desktop," says James DeBragga, general manager of Windows Consumer Marketing at Microsoft. Apple hasn't said why it wants Mac OS X to use fewer resources, but a common theory is that it wants future iPhones and perhaps netbook or tablet devices to run the same OS as its beefier Macs do.
DeBragga told InfoWorld that Microsoft designed Windows 7 to reduce the overall memory footprint compared with Windows Vista. It did so by reducing the overall number of services running at boot, improving Desktop Windows Manager memory consumption and reducing the memory requirements for features throughout Windows 7. "Users have no patience for a long boot-up or shut-down time," says Dan Kusnetzky, an independent research analyst.
Linux distribution vendors are also slimming down their versions of Linux. Ubuntu, for example, has stripped out MySQL, CUPS (Common Unix Printing Service), e-mail, and LDAP functionality to bring the size of its OS down from about 700MB to 200MB.
And Red Hat, Novell, and Ubuntu have all delivered stripped-down versions of their Linux distros for use in virtual appliances, several of which often run on one physical computer, so footprint becomes a key issue for them. Red Hat's AOS (Application Operating System), for example, lets you run Linux Enterprise Edition apps unmodified in a portable virtual machine. And JeOS -- which Ubuntu, Novell, and others offer -- builds a stack that is "just enough" to support that application by analyzing what APIs and library components need to be called for what functions.
While Apple always plays it close to the vest, it too has stated publicly that the next Mac OS will be smaller: "Taking a break from adding new features, Snow Leopard ... dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X, making it even more efficient for users and giving them back valuable hard drive."
Not everyone is convinced that the traditional OSes will stay small. Tony Meadow, president of Bear River Associates, says that the current OS footprint reductions are all about pruning, such as removing old graphics APIs. But he believes that new capabilities will pull the OSes to keep growing, despite the periodic pruning.
New devices drive need for a much smaller OS
Beyond making the OSes smaller for physical computers and virtual machines, the major platform providers face a new pressure to reduce their OSes' size: the several new classes of devices, from netbooks to smartphones. Netbooks are a good example: Because their hardware resources are much more limited than regular laptops', Microsoft has had to keep Windows XP available for them, since Vista simply can't run on them.
Much of the latest mobile hardware can be run to good advantage on microprocessors and OSes that require less power. The high-tech rumor mill lately has been abuzz about the possibility of a full-size notebook running a smartphone-oriented processor such as ARM's with an embedded version of Linux; such a device would have a battery life of days, not hours. "To an ARM device, a laptop looks like the Hoover Dam in terms of battery life," says Jim Ready, CTO of Citrix Systems.
Dell has already taken a step in this direction with its "BlackTop" Latitude laptop, which can boot into Linux for e-mail, Web access, and document viewing instead of Windows (which you can also boot into for traditional work).
Smartphones such as the Apple iPhone and the Research in Motion BlackBerry are also increasingly providing computerlike capabilities, creating demand for computerlike OSes to run on them. Witness Celio's RedFly, a smartphone terminal that connects to a cellular phone over Bluetooth or a USB. It weighs just 1.4 pounds and features an 8-inch screen and an 8.3-inch keyboard large enough to do real work. RedFly uses the Windows Mobile OS as an operating system, and its users typically work in their browser, often using Web 2.0 applications.
Time for the browser to supplant the OS?
The dependence on the browser, instead of the OS, in such devices has convinced some that the OS should shrink even further, ceding much of its role to the browser.
One of those believers is Philippe Winthrop, a mobile analyst at Strategy Analytics. He says the notion of cloud computing is a major driver behind the movement away from full-featured OSes and toward having critical functions reside in the browser.
For example, the SDK for the hot new Palm OS provides developers with CSS, JavaScript, and XML, all the tools that are used in a modern browser. These tools let developers write applications as widgets that do not require the support of an onboard OS.
Winthrop also says when back-end and front-end services both use the same Web technologies, the need for a powerful OS is reduced.
Tomi Rauste, president of Movial Creative Technologies, a mobile consultancy, picks up on that idea. Rauste believes combining Web technologies obviates the need for application integration at a deeper level. "Using Web technologies to customize a user interface is far easier than using interface technologies where you have to have native coding skills to change the interface," Rauste says.
Of course, Microsoft is not convinced that the browser will take over much of the OS. While there are a number of embedded versions of Windows, including Windows CE and Windows XP Embedded, where hardware designers use only those components needed for their device, DeBragga says he doesn't see the browser taking over most of operating system chores.
It is true that 50 percent of the time a user is in his or her browser, but the browser is not suited to handle the other applications a computer can handle, DeBragga argues. He cites document editing and video editing as example tasks that don't require a browser but do require a powerful operating system.
Bear River's Meadow agrees. While the OS may get smaller and more users will live in their browsers, he says there is still a lot of competitive advantage to having a fully featured OS that does things other operating systems don't. Case in point: "OS X running on the iPhone gives the iPhone incredible power."
But even that legitimate OS dependence is changing, counters Winthrop. He points to Photoshop.com and Photoshop Express, Web versions of the premier photo-editing package Adobe Photoshop. There was a time when no one would have thought that feature-rich Photoshop would ever be a Web 2.0 application, but to a great extent it is now.
For a growing class of users, notes independent analyst Kusnetzky, a device that presents a Web browser, Internet mail, a word processor, and a calendar is more than sufficient for their needs.
It's certain the OS will continue to shrink, in whatever direction
The incredible shrinking of Windows 7, Mac OS X Snow Leopard, and Linux JeOS are no accidents. The OS center of gravity is indeed shifting away from the large do-it-all operating systems to a far more targeted approach.
The reason for these changes by the major vendors is downright Darwinian. All of them realize that they must adapt or die as virtualization, cloud computing, the explosion of unique devices, and the desire for more efficient, less costly operating systems all drive the next generation of business users toward smaller, less costly, and more efficient operating environments
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