Mozilla backs move to decriminalize iPhone jailbreaking
Mozilla is backing a move that would nullify copyright infringement charges against people who "jailbreak" their iPhones, a practice that Apple Inc. considers against the law.
In comments submitted to the U.S. Copyright Office , the maker of Firefox said it supports the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) in its request for an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The EFF wants the Copyright Office to let users jailbreak their phones without fear of copyright infringement penalties.
[ Users of an early version found that Mozilla's mobile browser has a 'showstopper' flaw. And read the InfoWorld Test Center's guide to browser security. ]
Apple opposes the exemption, and in its own filing with the Copyright Office, has said that jailbreaking is a violation of copyright laws that protect its software.
"This is not us criticizing Apple," John Lilly, Mozilla's CEO, said in an interview Monday. "But it's the principle of the thing. Choice is good for users, and choice shouldn't be criminalized. The Internet is too important for all of us for that."
"Jailbreak" is the term used to describe circumventing the digital rights management (DRM) technology on a cell phone so that the user can install third-party applications not authorized by the phone's maker or the mobile carrier. The term was popularized by iPhone owners after several groups of programmers figured out how to hack the first-generation iPhone's operating system.
Although it never mentioned the iPhone by name in its comments, Mozilla made no bones about the danger it sees if a company like Apple is the sole gatekeeper of a smartphone. "By controlling the software that can be installed on these cellular phones, these companies can limit and control the type of programs and functionality that is available to users of their devices," Mozilla's general counsel, Harvey Anderson, wrote in the comments submitted to the Copyright Office (download PDF).
Anderson said that the DRM technology used to prevent people from installing software has a "chilling effect on users and innovation" because they are afraid that jailbreaking their phones is illegal.
He went on to argue that smartphones are akin to a computer, and because they can be used to access the Internet, should not be limited to the software authorized by the handset maker and/or the mobile service provider. "These devices contain Internet Web browser, and are therefore effectively users' doorway to the Internet -- a public commons," Anderson said. "Consumers should be entitled to use any software program they choose to access the Internet."
Apple includes a version of its own Safari browser on the iPhone, and decides which third-party applications can be downloaded from its App Store online mart, the only authorized distribution channel. In the past, Apple has rejected programs it says duplicate its own iPhone software, a notion that is reportedly spelled out in the iPhone's software development kit (SDK) licensing agreement. So far, no major rival to Safari has been offered to users through the App Store.
As things stand now, Mozilla would be unlikely to craft a version of Firefox for the iPhone, said Lilly. "The SDK is very clear, that Flash and Firefox and other runtimes are not welcome on the iPhone," he said. "Given the choice, would we work on a platform where the sole company controlling it makes us unwelcome, or would we work on a platform, like Linux, where we are welcome? The answer is going to be easy for us."
Mozilla is currently working on a mobile browser based on the same code that drives Firefox. Codenamed "Fennec," the browser is in the preliminary stages of development. The first build for Windows Mobile-powered phones, for instance, was released only last week.
Although he declined to get into product development specifics, Lilly said he doubts Mozilla would venture into the iPhone even if the Copyright Office grants the DMCA exemption over jailbreaking.
Opera Software ASA, a Norwegian company noted for its mobile browser, has come to the same decision. According to CEO Jon von Tetzchner, Opera considered, then abandoned development for the iPhone when it realized that Apple's SDK license barred other browsers.
Mozilla wasn't the only technology company or developer who weighed in on the side of the EFF. Skype Communications, the eBay Inc. subsidiary known for its voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) software, for example, also backed the exemption request. "Copyright law should not interfere with a user using his or her phone to run Skype and enjoy the benefits of low- or no-cost long-distance and international calling," Skype said. So did Jay Freeman, the developer of Cydia, the open-source application installer that acts as an App Store substitute for jailbroken iPhones.
Claiming that his program is installed on 1.6 million iPhones worldwide, a quarter of them in the U.S., Freeman wasted no time blasting Apple's software restrictions. "They have denied competing mail applications, competing camera applications and competing mapping systems," Freeman said in comments he submitted supporting the EFF request (download PDF). "They also have exerted control over what they [feel] to be acceptable content, sometimes vacillating (first denying any application using the word 'fart,' then allowing one in, which rapidly becomes the #1 most popular application in the store."
The danger of a gatekeeper like Apple on the iPhone is that innovation is stifled, Lilly argued. "These vertical silos don't enable innovation," he said. "And technology diffusion takes much longer, if it ever happens."
Verizon to roll out LTE in two US cities this year
Verizon will start to roll out its LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network in two cities in the U.S. late this year, and then expand to 25 to 30 markets in 2010, it announced on Wednesday.
The network will be built using radio equipment from Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson.
[ Read Ephraim Schwartz's Turning smartphones into desktops on the go. Then, get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]
Trials of LTE, which Verizon has done with Vodafone in Europe and the U.S., have shown speeds of up to 80Mbps, according to Dick Lynch, Verizon executive vice president and CTO. But what matters the most is the average speed, and that is not yet known, according to Lynch.
"We won't know what the real average speed is until we have a network deployed, so come talk to me at the end of December," he said.
The first users of LTE will be laptop users, who will see improvements in speed over EV-DO (Evolution-Data Optimized) networks, according to Lynch, and he expects the first smartphones to show up in mid-2011.
"But LTE is really, I think, the opportunity for us an industry to begin to see all sorts of consumer devices come with embedded wireless capabilities," he said.
For example, digital cameras could have built-in support for LTE.
"If I had a camera that was smart enough to monitor the amount of data on my flash card and upload it to my network cloud for storage or upload it to my PC directly, then I would be a very happy photographer," said Lynch.
It will become possible to build LTE into lots of different consumer products because of the global scale of the LTE rollout, which will make it easier to convince the consumer electronics manufacturers that there is demand for this.
"Where there is demand there is volume, and, of course, with volume comes price reductions," said Lynch, who thinks that prices will come down to the right level for the consumer electronics manufacturers in two or three years.
So users will end up with five or six devices with built in support for LTE.
Pricing hasn't been decided, but will be based on usage. Today Verizon has a 50MB and a 5GB package.
"I think the world has to go there, because wireless data is a limited resource. But once we do that these five or six devices may in total use only a fraction of what an existing data user currently consumes. So as a result I think we'll see some new pricing models that allow us to aggregate users multiple devices, and price accordingly," said Lynch.
Accused rogue admin Terry Childs makes his case
He's been in jail for seven months now, but former San Francisco network administrator Terry Childs says he's going to keep fighting to prove he's innocent of computer crime charges.
Childs was arrested on July 12, charged with disrupting the City of San Francisco's Wide Area Network during a tense standoff with management.
[ InfoWorld's ongoing coverage of the Terry Childs case includes the jaihouse interview. And Paul Venezia asks has Childs attempt to protect the network password gone awry? ]
In his first interview since the arrest, given a week ago, Childs contended that he did nothing illegal while working for the city and argued that his actions, depicted as criminal by prosecutors, were in line with standard network security practices. The criminal court case before him prevented him from commenting in much detail on the case, but he outlined his defense in recently filed court documents, describing a tense July 9 stand-off with police and city officials.
That afternoon Childs "unwittingly" found himself in a surprise meeting in the city's Hall of Justice, where Childs maintained network facilities. At the meeting were his boss, DTIC Chief Operations Officer Richard Robinson, San Francisco Police Department Chief Information Officer Greg Yee and human resources representative Vitus Leung. On the phone were engineers, listening in to confirm whether the passwords he gave were correct.
They were not, and within days Childs was charged with disrupting computer services and faced further counts of unauthorized network access. He faces seven years in prison if convicted.
The July 9 meeting was the culmination of a long-simmering dispute between Childs and his managers, who had been seeking administrative passwords to the network since at least February. Childs had refused to provide the passwords, apparently because he feared that they would be shared with management or outside contractors, according to court filings.
Even though it went against the orders of his supervisors, Childs was doing his job by refusing to hand over the passwords to a roomful of people, his attorney Richard Shikman argues in the filings. "The response to suspend him was arguably legal. The response to prosecute him is not," he wrote.
The Terry Childs case can seem like a cautionary tale of the power wielded by the people in charge of computer systems. Or it can seem like a poignant reminder of how dedicated employees can be thwarted at the whim of management.
Childs is no angel. He has already served four years in Kansas prison on aggravated robbery and aggravated burglary charges, stemming from an incident that occurred when he was a teenager.
Three of the charges against Childs in the San Francisco case stem from modems that were found in his office.
Prosecutors said these modems provided illegal access to the city's network, but in court filings, Childs's lawyer says they were used for work. One was set up to dial out to Childs's pager any time a problem popped up on the city's network. The second was a DSL modem that had been set up even before Childs was hired at DTIS, used to connect to the Internet and test access to the city's network. The third was for emergency use only, designed to connect city computers to a disaster recovery site so that the city's network could be up and running in the event of an emergency.
"The existence, use and nature of modems are within the scope of the employment of a network engineer," his attorney argues in court filings.
Childs may have felt justified in refusing to hand over the passwords to strangers, but obviously something happened to lead up to the tense July 9 showdown, said Bruce Schneier, a noted computer security expert and Chief Security Technology Officer with BT. "That's not a normal day at the office," he said. "It does seem strange. It feels like there is more to the story than we know."
"The passwords are owned by the city, so as an employee he's obligated to give them up to his boss," Schneier added.
If he had to do it all over again, that's exactly what Terry Childs would do. "I'd have gotten out before it came to this," he said last week. "I have a great house ... and I'm on the verge of losing it since I'm in here. I'm out of a job, and don't know what'll happen with all this."
Childs's lawyer has moved that the charges against him be dropped. A hearing on that motion is set for Feb. 27.
Infoworld's Paul Venezia contributed to this story.
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Why Toshiba is buying Fujitsu's HDD business
With the acquisition of Fujitsu's hard-disk drive (HDD) business, Toshiba would position itself to become a leading contender in the enterprise-class solid-state disk (SSD) drive market, as well as initially leap to the head of the pack in the 2.5-inch HDD space, say industry observers.
Toshiba and Fujitsu said today they had signed a provisional agreement under which Toshiba will acquire 80% of Fujitsu's hard-disk drive business. The deal is expected to close during April.
[ Frustrated by your PC support? You're not alone. Get answers from Christina Tynan-Wood in InfoWorld's Gripe Line blog and newsletter. ]
Fujitsu said it would hold onto 20% of its hard drive business for a not yet determined period of time to smooth the transition of the business to Toshiba, which will make it a subsidiary.
Fujitsu is a leader in enterprise-class 2.5-inch HDD market, as well as in mobile devices.
The fast growing 2.5-inch drive marketplace includes Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital, Fujitsu, Toshiba and Samsung. Fujitsu ranks third in number of units shipped, ahead of Seagate, says Tom Coughlin, an analyst with Coughlin Associates.
Last year, Fujitsu shipped 38.6 million 2.5-in HDDs. Only Hitachi, with 50.4 million, and Western Digital, with 50.3 million, lead it. Toshiba followed Fujitsu with 34.5 million, and Seagate trailed with 29.8 million units shipped.
Let's make a deal
Western Digital Corp. had been in talks with Fujitsu to buy its HDD business. That deal was estimated to be worth $945 million. The value of Toshiba's Fujitsu buyout was not disclosed.
Coughlin and Gregory Wong, an analyst with the research firm Forward Insights, said the deal between Western Digital and Fujitsu fell through because there was not cultural synergy between the two companies, and because converting U.S. dollars with Japanese Yen would have made a buyout more difficult. Both analysts speculated that Japan's government may have helped broker the deal between the two native companies.
While a leader in the hard disk drive market, Fujitsu has been loosing money on its products because its cost to produce drives are too high, Coughlin said. "It has some similarities to the issues Hitachi has having. They had a high cost structure for building drives, which put them at a disadvantage to a Western Digital or Seagate."
Toshiba, on the other hand, has been profitable in the HDD marketplace for the past 30 years. This year will be its first unprofitable year, the company said.
With the acquisition of Fujitsu's 2.5-in HDD business, Toshiba, which sells its hard drives mainly into the consumer laptop marketplace, will effectively be catapulted into first place in unit shipments, Coughlin said. And, with Fujitsu's 20% to 25% share of the enterprise 2.5-inch HDD space, Toshiba gets an instant business customer base.
Scott Maccabe, general manager of the Americas for Toshiba's storage business, said, "We have been investigating entering the enterprise space for some time. We did our due diligence of what it would take to expand our market share. The logic made it more reasonable for us to acquire that rather than develop it in-house." "It really lines up from a strategic as well as tactical perspective for us," Maccabe said.
A solid win on SSD
One market that has escaped Toshiba is in enterprise-class SSD drives, the fastest growing segment of the flash drive marketplace. Toshiba invented NAND flash memory, but for all of its innovation in the space, the company has only two SSD products based on NAND -- one for laptops, the other an enterprise-class drive.
Stec Inc. and Intel Corp. are the current leaders in the enterprise-class SSD space.
Maccabe said the Fujitsu acquisition would open an instant door into the enterprise-class SSD market because of the depth of Fujitsu's existing enterprise-class business customers. Wong agreed.
"I think for Toshiba, they need to make sure their solid-state disk unit and hard-disk drive unit work together. Currently, Toshiba's SSDs are basically being manufactured and sold by their NAND flash business unit. So, internally, I wouldn't be surprised if there isn't some friction there," Wong said. "Samsung has the same problem."
Maccabe, however, said Toshiba's HDD unit will focus on enterprise SSD sales because they have more experience in that sales space. Toshiba aims to build on the consolidation between the two companies to raise its share in the overall HDD market to over 20% by 2015, it said.
Even with the many synergies between the two companies, Maccabe said he didn't expect layoffs to result from the buyout. Fujitsu and Toshiba both sell into the mobile market place, but Maccabe said overlap was minimal.
Toshiba has a 1.8-inch hard drive line and Fujitsu does not. Fujitsu has an enterprise-class HDD product line; Toshiba doesn't. And, while both companies have 2.5-inch HDD lines, Maccabe said Fujitsu would "leverage any overlap into efficiency and scale and then have a broader set of products," Maccabe said. "We're committed to bringing everybody over," he said.
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Netbooks in the business: Do they make sense?
With the some of the most recognized names in the high-tech industry -- Intel, Arm, Microsoft, Linux, Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Sony, and many more --hyping netbooks as the next big thing, InfoWorld decided to take a look at a category whose exact definition is still in flux to see how and where they fit into business usage.
When it comes to deciding if your IT department should support netbooks, IT must answer two critical questions.
[ Consideringa netbook? See which netbooks InfoWorld Test Center rates as the best. | Looking for netbook productivity software? Check out these Office alternatives. ]
First, can netbooks play a unique role better than any other device you have? In other words, are they a category distinct from laptops at the high-performance and usability end, while standing apart from handhelds at the lower range in performance and usability??
Second, although netbooks make a great first impression as practical and inexpensive devices, IT must also consider how mobile devices are used at the street level within their own organization. Do they fit into the overall business IT strategy? Do they add to or detract from the total cost of ownership?
Just a year ago, netbook configurations were typically set to 512MB of RAM, 2GB to 4GB of flash storage, and less powerful microprocessors that limited what apps could run on them. They also tended to have small screens and keyboards. Almost all of them ran some flavor of the Linux operating system.
Today, netbooks are smaller than a sheet of paper, no thicker than an inch, and weigh 1.5 to 3 pounds, depending on whether you opt for a three-, four-, or six-cell battery. Many come with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, a 160MB hard drive, 1GB of memory, and a screen size between 8 and 12 inches. (Why these dimensions? Because Microsoft has an agreement with netbook makers that the size of the screen can be no bigger than 12 inches in return for keeping Windows XP available to them.) Netbooks come loaded with either Linux or Windows XP, and when it ships, Windows 7 will also run on netbooks, unlike Vista. The cost is typically around $300 to $350, depending on the configuration.
A no-brainer: Field service usage for netbooks
Netbooks make the perfect fit for many field service operations -- transportation and logistics, repair and servicing, surveying, even medical care -- thanks to their small size, low price, and the fact you can create or run custom applications quickly and cheaply because they use standard desktop operating systems (unlike handhelds).
"Good enough to use and cheap enough to lose" is what early techies used to say about RadioShack's TRS- 80, aka the Trash 80, in the 1980s -- the first "netbook." The same can apply to most netbooks today. Whether a unit is stolen out of truck because the driver forgot to lock the door or it's dropped onto the pavement, a company is more likely to have spares in the closet rather than paying for fancy overnight delivery replacement services.
The small size adds other advantages, notes Ryan Meyer, a field service business owner of a PC maintenance company. His employees have found the diminutive dimension to be a life-saver when they are stuck behind a server cabinet, cramped up behind their knees, and running diagnostics or checking out serial and model numbers. "You just pull them back there with you, and the long battery life is helpful, too," Meyer says.
Perhaps the least recognized benefit is found in the availability of standard operating systems rather than the proprietary OSes used in many field service handheld devices, notes Eric Openshaw, U.S. technology leader at the IT consultancy Deloitte: "They are easier to maintain, upgrade, and customize."
Familiarity with Windows or Linux means less of a learning curve for both IT and users. Plus, standardizing the hardware and the OS translates to lower development costs and faster turnaround time whether the IT department is doing the work in-house or paying a consultancy or vendor for customized application development.
Plus, the use of common OSes makes it easy for application developers to support netbooks in a big way, which should drive the netbook further and faster into business, especially for companies like UPS, says Openshaw.
Contrast that to a handheld device's requirements, notes Ron Purdhomme, vice president of practice development for inCode, a telecommunications consultancy. It takes a fair amount of coding and middleware to run a Motorola Symbol device (common in many field forces), and the same is true for Windows Mobile development.
Netbook as a basic productivity tool
If the stars line up correctly, there's another area where netbooks may earn a place in business: as basic systems for the many employees who don't work on intense spreadsheets or complex documents, use a fraction of Microsoft Office's capabilities, and spend as much time on e-mail and Web apps as anything else.
Most netbooks have three standard USB ports, an Ethernet port, and a PC card slot, and they take the same standard wireless cards to connect to the Internet as notebooks. There are no connectivity differences and thus no special management or security issues for IT when using a netbook remotely. Once the connection is made, hardware differences become invisible. At home or in the office, users can connect a keyboard and monitor to get around the ergonomics issue when working for long periods; on the road, they have an easier-to-carry system for light duties.
There's still the issue of supporting big apps like Microsoft Office, but as Google and others continue to put productivity applications in the cloud, the performance barrier could disappear -- assuming these cloud productivity apps can truly challenge Office.
Even if such cloud-based productivity apps don't end up displacing Office, several Office alternatives would work well for most "casual" business users -- particularly Lotus Symphony, as the InfoWorld Test Center discovered.
Netbooksas notebook killers?Not likely
Is the netbook going to replace the laptop? There are several reasons why this is unlikely.
Their very advantage in field service -- their small size -- means that users can't do much with them other than fill out a form, take an order, look up the availability of a replacement part, or check e-mail.
Ramon Ray, author of "Technology Solutions for Growing Businesses," is a netbook user, but he says its capabilities are limited by screen and keyboard size. Ray says he takes it with him on short day trips and even on one-nighters. "But if I'm going away for two or three days, it's too small."
Ray explains that he is a touch typist and that the small keyboard slows him down; also, he gets eyestrain from the 12-inch screen: "After 30 minutes, it's not going to happen."
Ray kids that you wouldn't want to run a CAD/CAM system on a netbook. Microsoft agrees, and it's not kidding. "A netbook is about consumption not creation," says James DeBragga, general manager for Windows Consumer Marketing at Microsoft. Simple document editing tasks are fine, but DeBragga says you wouldn't want to work on a complex spreadsheet on a netbook. If you're like the average user with 5 to 10 windows open simultaneously, you'll find that navigating among the applications and tackling serious business tasks is difficult, he says.
Not only is the screen small, but the keyboard is three-quarter size, so typing will be harder for most people. From an ergonomics standpoint, netbooks are not big enough to comfortably use over an extended period of time and not small enough to put in your pocket, notes Ken Dulaney, a senior analyst at Gartner.
Even if connected to a keyboard and monitor for better ergonomics, a netbook's processing and storage limitations come into play, confining its use to basic productivity tasks.
Road warriors may like the idea of a lightweight device for quick trips, but there's the extra cost and labor burden of maintaining two systems for these employees. Plus, what is the point of equipping your road warriors with a netbook for browsing and e-mail if they still need to carry around a full-sized notebook for everything else? In that situation, the netbook becomes not lightweight but extra weight. And the $300 plus price tag isn't a savings at all, but a luxury add-on. In this tough economic climate, that's a luxury you can skip.
Netbooks do have a place -- and a hidden advantage
Despite their limitations, it's clear that netbooks make sense in many field environments, as well as for traveling users such as salespeople who don't have demanding software needs.
And they will bring another advantage to businesses, says Gartner's Dulaney: Netbooks are putting downward price pressure on laptops. As notebooks get cheaper and perhaps a bit smaller, businesses save money.
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Early Mozilla mobile browser has 'showstopper' flaw
Perhaps pre-alpha was a bit too early for Mozilla to release its Fennec mobile browser for Windows Mobile.
Early adopters who downloaded the application after it was announced Feb. 10 found it essentially doesn't work. "The bad news is the browser is basically useless for many people," Mark Finkle, a Fennec developer, wrote in a blog post describing the problem.
[ Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]
The episode doesn't bode well for Mozilla, which has already faltered with previous mobile browsing efforts and is lagging behind competitors including Opera, Apple's Safari ,and IE Mobile, which are securing footholds among mobile users.
For many people who tried Fennec on Windows Mobile, the browser loaded only a checkerboard pattern image any time they tried to open a Web page.
Finkle suspects the problem is related to restrictions that Windows Mobile puts on memory use. Fennec developers are working on ways to get around those restrictions to solve the problem, he said.
When Fennec developers released the browser, they said it wasn't meant to be a broad release, but they hoped early adopters would try it and offer feedback about how it works.
They targeted just one device, the HTC Touch Pro. However, people commenting after the initial blog post say that they could only load the checkerboard pattern even on the Touch Pro.
Fennec is also available as an alpha release on Nokia's N810 tablets.
While other browser developers are improving the mobile Web experience, Mozilla has struggled for years to get a working browser to the mobile market. In 2004, its Minimo mobile browser project was promising enough to attract a financial investment from Nokia. The effort slowly fizzled, however, and in late 2007 Mozilla said it would discontinue work on Minimo and focus on a new effort that became known as Fennec.
Mozilla also spent some time developing a project called Joey, which lets users clip and save text, photos and videos while using a PC and then access that content through a browser on a cell phone. That too fizzled after about a year and is no longer supported.
Meanwhile, Apple set the bar higher for mobile browsing with its version of Safari on the iPhone, which displays Web pages just as they appear on a computer, letting users zoom in to read sections of a page. Microsoft plans to offer an updated version of IE Mobile that similarly makes it easy for users to zoom in on Web pages.
In addition, Opera has aggressively developed and promoted its mobile browsers, and new entrants like Skyfire have earned praise for innovation.
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Symantec to release Endpoint Virtualization Suite in spring
Symantec Tuesday unveiled Endpoint Virtualization Suite, its set of server-based tools for controlling and delivering laptop and desktop application environments through flexible online provisioning.
The suite includes Symantec Workspace Streaming, Workspace Corporate, Workspace Remote, Workspace Virtualization and Workspace Profiles, used separately or in combination to support ways to stream applications to authorized laps or desktops.
[ Track the latest trends in virtualization in InfoWorld's Virtualization Report blog. ]
The suite will be available this spring and represents the development, integration, and rebranding of technology Symantec gained via the acquisitions of nSuite (with its PrivacyShell products, AppStream, and Altiris.
View a slideshow on tech M&A deals.
"The usefulness in this is regaining control of the endpoint, the desktop specifically," says Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Mark Bowker about the suite, noting that similar emerging technologies from Citrix, Microsoft, and VMware are coming into view.
He points out that this approach of centrally managing the control of operating systems and the desktop environment through virtualization methods, while promising improved management, is still largely untested in the enterprise.
Symantec Workspace Corporate, says Brad Rowland, Symantec's director of marketing, supports portable user workspace management and is intended primarily for internal corporate use, such as for call centers, and supports single sign-on capabilities, including biometrics. Workspace Remote is oriented toward browser-based remote access and gateway security. The two programs can combine local and remote applications into a single workspace that maintains context as the user moves from machine to machine, with local printing management.
Rowland says Workplace Profiles can be used to separate underlying applications from critical data. "It allows you to take the user experience and make it portable in a thumb drive or out of the cloud," Rowland says.
Symantec Workspace Virtualization is basically the former Altiris Software Virtualization Solution intended to increase application stability, and supports multiple concurrent users with virtualized applications in environments that include Microsoft Windows Terminal Server, and Citrix, adding application isolation. It is priced at $46 per user.
Symantec Workplace Streaming (formerly AppStream) provides on-demand application streaming, allowing customers to use their industry standard MSI Windows Installer packages without repackaging, maintaining the MSI logic through deployment. It allows hardware type and context to be detected so customers can define user profiles appropriately.
Symantec Workspace Corporate and Workplace Remote are each priced at $189 per user, while Workplace Streaming costs $70 per user.
The streaming and server architecture in the Endpoint Virtualization Suite runs on the Windows 2008 Server and platform, and can make use of Active Directory and LDAP Server to establish user rights and permissions.
Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate
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Outsourcer Aragon buys Krugle
Software outsourcing company Aragon Consulting Group has acquired Krugle, which has specialized in code search and analysis.
Aragon announced the acquisition on Tuesday. With the Krugle technology, Aragon plans to enhance its Next.0 Delivery Platform with real-time on-demand visibility into outsourced software development; defects reduction; developer productivity, and code-centric team collaboration.
[ Related: Krugle enhances code search appliance. ]
"The advantage in terms of buying Krugle is that Krugle technology helps us be significantly more productive in delivering our software services," said Mel Badgett, vice president of marketing at Aragon and a former Krugle official. Krugle technology offers visibility into existing source code, enabling more efficient changes to software, Badgett said.
Aragon will continue support of Krugle Enterprise products and the Krugle Open Source code search service. Development of Krugle technology also will continue with Aragon adding integration and customization options.
Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
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Sun offers open-source encryption key management protocol
Sun announced today that it is throwing its hat into the standards arena, proposing that its open source key management API be used as a universal way to allow encrypting devices to communicate with key management systems.
Sun said its reseller partners can now adopt the open source protocol to handle encryption keys without additional licensing. The protocol is implemented as a complete toolkit and can be downloaded from the Open Solaris Web site.
[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]
"This defines the way a key manager exchanges encryption keys with an encrypted device such as a tape drive or a disk drive," said Piotr Polanowski, Sun's encryption product manager. "The market has been pretty fractured when it comes to key management technology and we just want to be able to offer widest availability of that. We believe it benefits our customers, and so it will ultimately benefit us as well." Sun said its API protocol is currently available to customers using the Sun StorageTek KMS 2.0 Key Manager and StorageTek T9840D, T10000A, T10000B tape drives, as well as Sun's HP LTO4 drives shipped in Sun libraries.
"Open Storage solutions allows customers to break free from the chains of proprietary hardware and software, and this new protocol extends this lifeline into the expensive and highly fragmented encryption market, Jason Schaffer, senior director of storage product management at Sun, said in a statement.
Earlier this month, IBM , HP and EMC said they are also working on proposing a new standard, called the Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP) to make their encryption management software work together. The standard is being proposed through OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the consortium best known for its development of Web-services standards.
Polanowski said Sun's standard initiative is complementary to the KMIP effort, and he noted that the other vendors included Sun in defining their API. "At this point, we're looking at how our solution fits into the whole framework," he said.
Sun said it will work with standards bodies such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1619.3 Working Group and OASIS' Enterprise Key Management Infrastructure technical committee to further develop and formalize the interface as an industry standard.
Sun said RSA is also now developing a solution using this protocol to work with its RKM key manager . IBM's drive division is working on supporting this protocol in their IBM LTO4 drive shipped in Sun Libraries. Additionally, Sun has shared the protocol with other industry partners, including computer OEMs, back-up application providers and disk array and switch manufacturers.
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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New attack singles out IE flaw
Microsoft warned last week that it would be easy for cybercriminals to build new attacks using bugs it patched in the Internet Explorer browser; now that prediction has come true.
On Tuesday, security vendor Trend Micro said that it had spotted the first attack taking advantage of one of two flaws patched a week ago. Microsoft has said that either of these vulnerabilities would be easy to exploit in online attacks.
[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ]
Over the weekend, Trend Micro researchers spotted what appears to be a small-scale, targeted attack that exploits the flaw to install spy software, said Paul Ferguson, a researcher with the antivirus vendor. "It installs a back door that uploads stolen information on port 443 to another site in China," he said.
Microsoft was unable to immediately comment on Trend Micro's report on Tuesday.
Although Ferguson does not know who wrote the attack code, he said that it looks similar to software that was sent to pro-Tibetan groups about a year ago, apparently for the purpose of intelligence gathering.
Both last year's attack and this latest malware are triggered when the user opens a malicious Word document. That document contains an ActiveX object that connects IE to a malicious Web site, which launches the attack and then installs the spy software.
The criminals don't need to use Word to exploit this flaw -- the attack would work if the victim were simply tricked into visiting a malicious Web site -- but this technique is consistent with past Tibet-focused attacks, Ferguson said.
Whether this will lead to more widespread Internet Explorer attacks is unclear, Ferguson said.
Verisign's iDefense group thinks that more attacks are likely. "Although this attack is limited in scope and will likely only be targeted to very few organizations, the availability of reliable exploit code will soon be discovered by others and these attacks will likely be widespread within a week's time," the company said in an alert sent out to customers Tuesday.
"Right now, we don't see any real proof of an ongoing campaign here," Ferguson said. "But ... it's very simple to mitigate this threat completely. You don't have to worry about antivirus protection: Just patch your machines."
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Riverbed bundles MS Server in WAN optimization appliances
Riverbed will sell Microsoft's Windows Server bundled with its WAN optimization devices as a way to simplify purchasing for its customers.
The server will run on the Riverbed Service Platform (RSP), a partition of Riverbed's Steelhead WAN optimization appliances that can support five VMware virtual machines per appliance.
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This would have been possible without the OEM agreement between Riverbed and Microsoft, but customers would have been required to deal with both vendors. Customers with existing Windows Server licenses can deploy the software on RSP if they pay appropriate license fees.
Running applications on branch office Steelheads enables businesses to consolidate the number of devices deployed in branches without actually pulling the applications out of the branches and into central data centers. Some businesses want to keep local instances of certain servers such as DHCP, DNS and print, for example.
Riverbed gear has undergone certification testing to show its hardware and virtual environment support the Microsoft software, which means that Microsoft will honor service support when Windows Server is deployed on the Riverbed machines.
To take advantage of the Windows Server bundle, customers have to buy a Steelhead device and upgrade it for about $1,000 to acquire RSP capabilities and to make sure the device has enough memory, Riverbed says. Pricing for the Microsoft software depends on the size of the deployment.
Riverbed already accelerates specific Microsoft applications based on the applications' unique protocol characteristics so they operate more efficiently over the WAN than if they were subjected just to Riverbed's generic optimization techniques. These applications include Windows, Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server, System Center Configuration Manager, Data Protection Manager, and App-V.
Optimizing applications over the WAN helps convince businesses to consolidate servers in datacenters rather than continue to support local servers in branch offices because they can do so without forfeiting performance.
Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
Altor tracks virtual machines in motion
Altor Networks' firewall software for virtual environments now supports a unique identifier to keep track of particular versions of virtual machines, even as they replicate themselves to different hosts.
Altor VF generates the identifier using VMware VM properties listed within vCenter, VMware's central management server. The ID follows each VM as it creates new versions of itself.
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The previous version of Altor VF kept track of VMs via IP address, which changed as VMs replicated via live migration. With the new software, if users copy VMs themselves -- separate from live migration -- they get a new identifier.
Altor VF 2.0 software also monitors all traffic in and out of the VMware console to ensure that this central administration tool for the virtual environment is kept safe from attacks. Users can set policies to allow expected traffic and block traffic indicative of a port scan or other attacks, the company says.
Economic Advantages, a Long Island, N.Y., financial services firm, sought out Altor VF as a way to protect its new virtual datacenter, says Oleg Gorelik, network engineer for the firm. As the company moved from physical servers to virtual servers and from corporate-housed to a hosted datacenter, he realized the virtual environment would raise new security issues.
In particular Gorelik was concerned that he lacked visibility into traffic among VMs on the same host. Since part of the reason for shifting to a virtual environment was better availability by virtue of virtual servers being able to live migrate, he wanted to be sure he could keep track of them.
Gorelik was ready to use the Altor gear late last year but decided to wait for Version 2 of the software. Altor competes with Apani, BlueLane, Catbird, and Reflex Systems.
Altor is also expanding its support to include open source monitoring and security gear. Altor VF shares traffic data it gleans with SNORT IDS (intrusion-detection system) software, NetMon monitoring software and Wireshark protocol analyzer software so they can apply their functionality to VMs that these tools would otherwise not be able to see.
This summer, the company says it will introduce its own IDS that will look for intrusions as an alternative to using a third-party IDS. Altor says it will license the IDS capability from a third party it would not name.
By early next year the company says it will expand its support of virtual infrastructure to include Citrix's Xen virtual environment as well as Microsoft's Hyper-V.
Altor's software is sold as a virtual appliance that runs on VMware VMs and applies policies to traffic among all VMs, even those within the same physical box. Traditional firewalls track traffic based on IP addresses of physical machines so they have a blind spot regarding traffic among VMs sharing the same machine.
Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Apple still has 'ideas' for Mac netbook, says analyst
An analyst who met with Apple recently believes the company has "ideas" about producing a Mac netbook, an ultra portable laptop computer.
Analyst Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford C. Bernstein & Co met with Apple's Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, covering for CEO Steve Jobs during a leave of absence, Apple's Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer and Apple's marketing chief Phil Schiller.
[ Analysts speculate that Apple will launch a netbook in 2009. Related: "Imagining an Apple netbook" | Discover the key Mac and Apple tech trends for business users. Read InfoWorld's Enterprise Mac blog and newsletter. ]
According to Sacconaghi, Apple's Cook hinted at "ideas" for a netbook as well as iPhone price changes and new smartphone handsets.
"Tim Cook stated that since Steve Jobs announced his leave of absence , he was spending more time on new products, how Apple could take the iPhone into new markets and examining iPhone's business model," said Sacconaghi, who is ranked the top computer analyst by Institutional Investor magazine.
The MacBook Air is Apple's smallest, lightest laptop.
Sanford C. Bernstein & Co manages portfolios for private and institutional investors currently valued at $85 billion.
"Several interesting tidbits point to new iPhones, potentially with different pricing/price points this year," Sacconaghi added.
A Mac netbook has long been rumoured since the success of smaller lighter laptops, typically with a 10" screen, from companies such as Asus, Acer, Dell, HP and MSI Wind.
Last week Asus said they had sold 4.9 million Eee PC netbooks last year despite the economic downturn.
Netbooks are traditionally competitively priced due to their relative lack of power and limited upgradability.
Apple's smallest, lightest laptop the MacBook Air starts at £1,271, which is a long way from what Apple would need to charge to make the a Mac netbook a success.
Apple has also previously said that the iPhone was there netbook, offering email and web surfing on the move.
Analyst Sacconaghi added that he expects Apple's stock to outperform the S&P 500 in the next year.
Sacconaghi also said he expects new Apple iMacs as earlier as next month and an new Apple iPhone in the summer.
Macworld UK is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Microsoft announces mobile apps store, backup service
Microsoft will introduce an application store with its newest version of Windows Mobile software, it planned to announce at Mobile World Congress, where it also was to formally open a limited beta for its My Phone data backup offering.
Windows Marketplace for Mobile will come with Windows Mobile 6.5, the newest version of the operating system, and will give users access to thousands of applications, said Scott Rockfeld, group product manager for Windows Mobile. Microsoft also introduced Windows Mobile 6.5 at MWC on Monday, saying the software should become available on phones early in the second half of the year.
[ Related: "Microsoft reveals 'My Phone' backup, sync service" | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]
While applications stores have been around for some time, Apple's easy-to-use App Store, accessible from the iPhone, popularized the idea of buying and downloading mobile applications. Now, independent companies, operators and mobile phone makers are building stores that are accessible from handsets and that offer wireless downloads.
Nokia also planned to announce at MWC a new application store that will carry content and programs for users of its phones that run the S60 and S40 operating systems.
Offering an applications store is "table stakes" these days, said Sean Ryan, an analyst at IDC. However, Microsoft hasn't disclosed a lot of details about its store, such as how easy it will be to use. "So there are still a lot of factors out there. But as a concept it's a good thing and something they need to do," he said.
While Windows Mobile phones come in many different form factors, Microsoft offers developers a module they can use to ensure their applications work across all the phones, Rockfeld said. That means most applications in the store should work on most phones.
He sought to minimize the potential conflict between Microsoft and its device-maker customers and operator partners, some of which may also be building application stores. "This isn't the end-all be-all," Rockfeld said. "Handango will be there, mobile operators will have their stores. We're not forcing anyone to make the decision to come to us."
In addition to the Handango mobile application Web site, PocketGear launched a store for Windows Mobile applications last week. PocketGear also runs a store for Palm applications.
Microsoft has already begun doing outreach to the developer community to let them know how the store works and how they can get their applications into it, Rockfeld said.
Another new service that Microsoft will offer and that the company planned to discuss at MWC is My Phone. Details about the mobile backup service leaked out in early February. It is now available in a limited invitation-only beta, Rockfeld said.
My Phone will be built into Windows Mobile 6.5 phones and will be downloadable to users of versions 6.0 and 6.1, he said. The service backs up calendar items, contacts, tasks, texts, photos, videos, music, documents and anything on storage cards, to the Web.
Users can set the service to automatically back up phone data once a day. They can also store photos, for example, on My Phone online and later restore those photos to the phone.
My Phone only comes with 200MB of storage space and IDC's Ryan wasn't clear on the market need for the service. "The idea of a smartphone is everything is backed up on the PC too, so I don't fully understand it," he said. "Maybe for people who don't want to or don't know how to back up on a PC might find this more intuitive."
Rockfeld said My Phone will be valuable for people who lose their phones or who want to upgrade their device but worry about the hassle of transferring all their data to a new phone.
The service is different from Apple's Mobile Me, said Rockfeld. "Mobile Me from Apple is really about PIM [personal information manager] synching," he said. Microsoft figures it has sync covered with Exchange, which syncs e-mail, calendar and contacts with Windows Mobile devices.
He also differentiates between My Phone and Mesh, another Microsoft offering. Mesh is more about syncing items from specified folders and sharing that data among multiple PCs and phones. "My Phone is truly a backup and restore service," he said. "Will these things work more closely together in the future? It makes sense."
The My Phone service is based on technology Microsoft acquired along with MobiComp in June last year.
Microsoft also announced at MWC that as part of a new contract LG Electronics will make Windows Mobile its primary, although not exclusive, mobile-phone software platform for the next four years. LG plans to launch 50 new Windows Mobile phones, including 25 in 2012, as part of the agreement, Rockfeld said.
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Spammers break Live Hotmail's CAPTCHA yet again
The battle by Microsoft to secure its Live Hotmail system from spammers appears to have failed yet again with the news that the latest version of its CAPTCHA authentication system has been broken.
According to a detailed analysis of the latest hack by security company Websense, spammers have come up with a new scheme to fool the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) that takes possible attack scenarios to new levels of sophistication.
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The process starts in the same way as did previous CAPTCHA-breaking attacks, using bot-controlled zombie PCs under remote control to fill in the main fields - name, password, country - asked for by Hotmail during signup. The CAPTCHA image presented by Hotmail is then uploaded to a remote server for image decoding, before being sent back to the client for the attempt to create the fake account to proceed.
The latest hack comes only months after Microsoft had previously altered CAPTCHA to beat similar attacks, having suffered more than one 'break' in 2008.
Websense's analysis of the hack suggests that this process will be successful in one out of every five to 8 attempts, or between 12 and 20 percent of the time, more than enough given the possible volume of account creation to offer the spammers a healthy return. The CAPTCHA image analysis itself is said to take only 20 to 25 seconds per attempt, per machine.
CAPTCHA matters to Microsoft because it is supposed to stop spammers creating large numbers of fake accounts to use as spam relays, taking advantage of the fact that the Hotmail domain is treated as a trusted source by anti-spam gateways and filtering services. Exploiting such trusted domain status simply increases the chances of a particular piece of spam getting past these barriers.
An innovative feature of the latest attack is that communication between the zombie PC and the remote host takes place using an encrypted channel, which makes detection or blocking of such traffic that much more difficult.
Microsoft's main weapon in the fight against Hotmail abuse is its ability to keep changing the image algorithm used to create the CAPTCHA images, buying time against abuse. Equally, the spammers appear able to catch up some time later by changing the decoding algorithms used by their software.
"As we've seen from previous patterns, spammers just attack whatever system is in place. They are financially motivated to get hold of details, and will increase the sophistication of attacks, in a persistent cycle," said Carl Leonard, Websense's European threat research manager.
The underlying change has been the rapid spread of automated tools for breaking CAPTCHA across a range of service providers, including Google and Yahoo. The same hacks are used to break CAPTCHAs protecting blogging accounts, creating a surge in fake websites running in parallel to fake email accounts. A range of suggestions have been put forward as replacements to the flawed system, including the use of 3D images that might be beyond current image-decoding technology.
Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Acer jumps into smartphone market
Acer has jumped head first into the smartphone market with its Tempo family of devices. They are all touch-enabled and based on Windows Mobile, the company announced on Monday.
The Tempo family is to a large extent the result of Acer buying Taiwanese smartphone maker E-Ten last year. Developing its new smartphones wouldn't have been possible without the R&D know-how it got via that deal, according to Aymar de Lencquesaing, the head of Acer's Smart Handheld Business Group.
[ Competition among business smartphones is heating up. See InfoWorld's guide to next-gen mobile and Test Center reviews of the BlackBerry Storm, iPhone 3G, T-Mobile G1, Palm Treo Pro, and HP iPaq 910c. | Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]
The first set of devices will be based on the existing version of Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system. Included is, for example, the M900, which comes equipped with a QWERTY keyboard, a 3.8-inch screen, and a fingerprint scanner for authentication. It also has HSDPA (High-Speed Download Packet Access) support, built-in GPS (Global Positioning System), and a 5-megapixel camera.
For users who aren't fond of QWERTY keyboards there is the F900, which also comes with 3.8-inch screen. It has a 3.2-megapixel camera, and you also get faster uploads using HSUPA (High-Speed Uplink Packet Access) and support for Wi-Fi.
Both phones will start shipping at the end of March or the beginning of April, according to Acer. Pricing will be announced at the time of launch.
The company is also working on a second set of smartphones that will be based on Windows Mobile 6.5, which was also announced on Monday, and come out by the end of the year.
De Lencquesaing also dropped hints about Acer working on smartphones based on other operating systems than Windows Mobile, including Android, but didn't provide any details.
Acer's goal is to become one of the top five smartphone vendors, which means it would at least have to displace Sharp from the fifth spot and sell about 1.3 million units per quarter, according to third quarter sales statistics from Gartner.
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Nokia will ship N97 loaded with Skype VoIP software
Skype is developing a VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) software client for Nokia's top-of-the-range N97 smartphone, executives of both companies said Tuesday.
Nokia will load the application onto phones before they ship. It will be integrated into the phone's address book, making it as easy to place a call to a contact's Skype username as to their regular phone number, said Skype Chief Operating Officer Scott Durchslag.
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The Skype application will allow users to make voice calls, send instant messages, and also to select it as a widget so they can see which of their friends are online, all the time, said Jose-Luis Martinez, Nokia's Vice President for Nseries phones. It will use Wi-Fi or cellular connections, as available.
The N97 runs Nokia's S60 software platform, but the application under development is specific to the N97 and will not initially be available for other S60 phones, Durchslag said.
Skype is still just designing the user interface, and the application code hasn't been written, said Durchslag. He expects to have something ready to demonstrate by June, with the final application ready for release some time in the third quarter.
That makes it likely that Skype will be missing from the first batch of N97 phones. Those will be in stores in June, Nokia Executive Vice President Kai Öistämö said at a Nokia event on Monday.
Including an application for a service like Skype is a good fit with Nokia's design philosophy for the N97.
"What makes it our flagship is the tight integration with services," Öistämö said, pointing to the way the applications on the phone work with Nokia's online navigation, entertainment and e-mail tools.
Skype has already developed applications for other mobile phones. Two are distributed exclusively by 3G (third generation) mobile network operator Three, under the 3 Skypephone brand. A third, the INQ1, is also sold through Three but its developer Inq Mobile hopes to find other operators interested in selling it this year.
On Monday, Skype announced an update to its Windows Mobile application. Version 2.5 is now final, after months in beta, while a new beta version, 3.0, is available with two new features: file transfer, and the ability to send SMS (Short Message Service) text messages at Skype rates abroad or while roaming.
In addition to Windows Mobile version, the forthcoming N97 application and the dedicated Skype phones, mobile Skype is also available as a "lite" version for Android phones and about 100 other Java-enabled mobile phones from LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson. The lite version, still in beta testing, offers only basic Skype features including voice calling, instant messaging, and presence notification, and won't work over Wi-Fi connections, making a flat-rate data service indispensable.
For the full featured application on the N97, "We are starting at the high end," said Durchslag, "but you will see it in the mid-tier. Below that it's hard to deliver a good quality experience," he said.
Nevertheless, when it comes to extending Skype calling to low-end phones, "Time is on our side. Processing power will have to move down market," he said.
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Nokia, Qualcomm to work on smartphones together
The world's largest mobile phone vendor and the biggest cellular chip developer said Tuesday they plan to make 3G (third-generation) mobile devices together for the North American market.
Nokia and Qualcomm, which ended a long running patent battle in the middle of last year, will co-develop advanced devices based on UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), which is designed to succeed the most common mobile phone airwave standard in the world, GSM (Global System for Mobile communications).
[ Get the latest on mobile developments with InfoWorld's Mobile Report newsletter. ]
The partners will design mobile devices based on S60 software, which uses the Symbian OS. The devices will also use advanced chipsets from Qualcomm.
The first devices from the two companies are expected to launch in the middle of next year. They will be compatible with the upcoming Symbian Foundation platform, the companies said in a statement.
Last July, Nokia agreed to pay Qualcomm a multi-billion dollar amount in back payments and future royalties after a long court battle over wireless patents. At the same time, the companies said they would work together in the future.
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Developers are bullish on PaaS
Platform as a service, or PaaS, is the cousin of the better-known "software as a service." SaaS delivers a fully baked application you can subscribe to and use immediately; with PaaS, developers use free programming tools offered by the service provider to create applications and deploy them in the cloud . The infrastructure is offered by the PaaS provider or its partners, which charge by some usage metric such as CPU use or page views.
This development model is radically different from traditional approaches, where programmers install commercial or open-source tools on their local systems, write code, then deploy and manage the applications on their own infrastructures. But the PaaS model is rapidly gaining adherents .
[ Learn more about the new breed of utility computing and platform-as-a-service offerings | Keep up with app dev issues and trends with InfoWorld's Fatal Exception and Strategic Developer blogs. ]
Garrett Davis spent more than 30 years writing software for big insurance companies. But when he struck out on his own as an independent developer, he wanted to "get in on the ground floor of the new environment."
He turned to Google App Engine to build his work in the PaaS cloud. He says that "after many years of writing zillions of lines of Basic, then Cobol, then J2EE," App Engine's tools, especially the elegant Python, had great appeal. "The Python language doesn't force me to clutter up my code with curly braces and semicolons," Davis says.
Faster Development
Developers can be extremely productive with PaaS, in part because they don't need to worry about defining scalability requirements, nor do they have to write deployment descriptions in XML, which are all handled by the PaaS provider. Davis quickly produced payroll and property management applications. With AppEngine, he says, he needed only one month to reverse-engineer a workers' compensation application from one written over a period of 50 staff-months in J2EE.
Michael Iovino, CIO at Author Solutions in Bloomington, Ind., is also impressed with the time-to-market advantages of PaaS. Eight of his programmers built the company's iUniverse authoring application with Salesforce.com 's Force.com PaaS development environment. In only three months, the team delivered a full-fledged program with a complete set of business logic and multifaceted options that assist book authors with everything from text layout to marketing and distribution. "I'm pretty happy with the speed of development," Iovino says.
Ray Chance, executive director of ECMInstitute in Fredricksburg, Va., points to another big draw for PaaS: low cost. His nonprofit group is a hub for the distribution of information about enterprise content management. It uses a custom RSS service built with Google App Engine to get the information out to the institute's 1,000 members.
Chance says that as long as you have fewer than 5 million page views per month and need less than 500MB of online storage, the Google service is free. More important, Chance says, is that his App Engine-built RSS application is deployed and maintained in Google's datacenter, which Davis describes as "the most sophisticated collection of silicon and storage on the planet."
But there are drawbacks to building PaaS software. For example, Chance says App Engine's Python can sometimes be a "struggle" because of its memory management limitations. And caching issues can limit how quickly RSS feeds can be fed from his site. Davis also says organizations might find it difficult to port J2EE apps to Google's restricted environment.
The Force.com environment is fairly robust, says Iovino. And additional development tools are available from Salesforce.com's AppExchange third-party software market. He adds that Force.com will need better code-management capabilities if the PaaS model is going to succeed in the long term, however.
Iovino also notes that because code executes in the Salesforce.com multitenant infrastructure, developers have to be cognizant of limitations. For example, they need to break up a long service call or data request into smaller, more manageable pieces. Iovino says developers quickly incorporate that notion into their thinking .
Mike West , an analyst at Saugatuck Technology Inc., says research indicates that PaaS, while in the early adopter phase, is attracting developers from businesses of all sizes because of its ROI.
"An increasing percentage of application development dollars are moving to PaaS," he says.
Hallis a freelance writer living in Oregon. Contact him atmark.everett.hall@me.com . Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
Microsoft denies it profits from Vista-to-XP downgrades
Microsoft has denied that it makes money when users "downgrade" Windows Vista to the older XP, as a lawsuit filed last week alleges .
The lawsuit, submitted to a Seattle federal court last Wednesday, stems from the $59.25 fee that a California woman was charged in mid-2008 when she bought a Lenovo laptop and downgraded from Vista to XP.
[ Related: Will Microsoft let Windows 7 users downgrade to Windows XP? | 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. ]
"Microsoft does not charge or receive any additional royalty if a customer exercises those [downgrade] rights," said Microsoft spokesman David Bowermaster in an e-mail late last week. "Some customers may choose or need to obtain media or installation services from third parties to install the downgrade version."
In fact, it's computer makers, not Microsoft per se, who charge users the additional fees for downgrading a new PC from Vista to XP at the factory. Dell , for example, adds an extra $20 to the price to downgrade a PC.
Microsoft, however, may profit from the way it structures downgrade rights. Only buyers of PCs with pre-installed editions of Vista Business and Vista Ultimate can downgrade, and then only to Windows XP Professional . All three editions are higher-priced versions of their respective lines, a fact that the lawsuit mentioned in passing.
"Customers have been forced to purchase the most expensive version of [Windows XP] in order to 'downgrade' from the Windows Vista operating system," the complaint read.
That was the cause of some confusion last year, when Dell was accused of gouging customers by charging $150 to downgrade a new computer to XP. Dell, however, countered that although it did charge $20 to install XP on the machine, as well as to cover the cost of the additional media, the bulk -- $120 of the $150 -- was the price of upgrading the PC from the standard Home Premium to the more expensive Business edition.
Microsoft does not offer downgrade rights with its Vista Home Premium, the most popular of Vista's editions.
"Microsoft mandates that customers who want to downgrade to XP must purchase the license to Vista Business or Vista Ultimate," said Dell spokesman David Frink last December. "[That's] typically about a $130 premium, though some retail outlets charge more."
"Downgrade" describes the Windows licensing rights that Microsoft gives users, who are allowed under some circumstances to replace newer versions of Windows with an older edition without having to pay for another license. The practice became popular last year when users, unhappy with Vista's performance on the new PCs they bought, instead sought ways to run the leaner XP.
The lawsuit, filed by Los Angeles resident Emma Alvarado , charged Microsoft with multiple violations of Washington state's unfair business practices and consumer protection laws through its policy of barring computer makers from continuing to offer XP on new PCs after Vista's early-2007 launch. She claimed Microsoft's practice resulted in customers paying more for XP than they otherwise would. "They have been forced to pay substantially more to acquire the Windows XP operating system than they would have to pay in a competitive marketplace," the suit said.
Alvarado also named 100 "John Doe" co-defendants. "[They] are the persons, firms and corporations who have participated with Microsoft in the wrongdoings complained of and performed acts and made statements in furtherance thereof," the lawsuit read. "The Doe Defendants acts as co-conspirators and aided and abetted, or participated with, Microsoft in the commission of wrongful acts."
Bowermaster claimed that Microsoft had no downgrade program as such. "Microsoft does not have a downgrade program. It does offer downgrade rights as part of some Windows Vista licenses, including Windows Vista Business purchased through the OEM channel." That, however, belies the fact that Microsoft has regularly offered downgrade rights to users. When it released Windows XP in 2001, it allowed people who had XP licenses to downgrade to Windows 2000, Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 98 , according to Gartner analyst Michael Silver.
Alvarado is seeking compensatory damages and wants the case declared a class-action suit.
Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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