Thread: IT News 2009

Some Democrats, minority groups question net neutrality
Oct 16, 2009 06:49 pm |

A group of 72 Democrats has broken with Obama and the FCC chairman on new regulations
by Grant Gross

A group of 72 Democratic lawmakers is the latest to question the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's move to create new net neutrality regulations.

Democrats, including U.S. President Barack Obama, have generally supported new rules that would prohibit broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web content, but the group of 72 members of the House of Representatives sent a letter Thursday to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, saying they're concerned that new regulations would slow down investment in broadband networks. Many of the 72 Democrats are members of the "Blue Dogs," a conservative wing of the party, or of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Although the Congressional Black Caucus isn't traditionally against government regulation, some members are concerned that many African-Americans and other ethnic minorities lack access to broadband networks. Among the House Democrats signing the letter were Elijah Cummings of Maryland, Charlie Gonzalez of Texas and Loretta Sanchez of California.

The FCC on Thursday is scheduled to vote on a notice of proposed rule-making, the first step toward approving formal net neutrality rules. The FCC has had informal open Internet principles since 2005, but cable provider Comcast, in a lawsuit, has challenged the agency's authority to enforce the principles.

The 72 House Democrats join 18 Senate Republicans, a coalition of minority groups, the Communications Workers of America and a coalition of telecom-related companies, including Cisco Systems, Ericsson and Motorola, in raising concerns about new net neutrality rules in recent days.

The FCC should "carefully consider the full range of consequences that government action may have on network investment," the Democratic letter said. "In light of the growth and innovation in new applications that the current [regulatory] regime has enabled, as compared to the limited evidence demonstrating any tangible harm, we would urge you to avoid tentative conclusions which favor government regulation."

Opponents of net neutrality rules say there have been few examples of broadband providers blocking or slowing traffic.

But net neutrality advocates say that traditional telecom carriers had to share their networks with competitors until 2005, when the FCC began relaxing those rules. There was significant investment in networks when telecom carriers had to share their networks, net neutrality advocates say.

A day before the Democrats' letter, a coalition of minority groups also sent a letter to the FCC, raising some of the same concerns.

"As organizations that serve communities that are among the most severely impacted by a lack of access to technology, we urge you to keep your number one focus on the need to get everyone connected," said the letter, signed by representatives of the Hispanic Technology and Telecommunications Partnership, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Asian American Justice Center and other groups. "We are concerned that some of the proposed regulations on the Internet could, as applied, inhibit the goal of universal access and leave disenfranchised communities further behind."

Podcast 49: Google Donut, BlackBerry Storm 2, Wi-Fi Direct
Oct 16, 2009 06:24 pm |

Join the editors of PC World for an irreverent round-table discussion of this week's hottest technology trends.
by PC World staff

Hold on to your balloons! This week on the PC World Podcast, editors Robert Strohmeyer, Ginny Mies, Tim Moynihan, and Mark Sullivan try to cover as much of the week's tech news as possible in 20 minutes.



* Android Donut tastes delicious. Ginny Mies offers her take on the new Google Android OS, and it's mmmmm good.
* Ginny give us a hands-on review of the new BlackBerry Storm 2. It's a massive improvement over its predecessors, but she's still not sold, and she'll tell you why.
* Mark Sullivan explains why the new Wi-Fi Direct standard may be the death of Bluetooth.

Have an e-mail account? Drop us a line! You can reach us at podcastatpcworlddotcom and review our podcast on iTunes. Subscribe to the weekly PC World Podcast on iTunes or via the PC World RSS feed.

Microsoft's free AV got 1.5 million downloads in first week
Oct 16, 2009 06:19 pm |
That number jumps to 2.6 million downloads in first two weeks
by Robert McMillan


Microsoft registered more than 1.5 million downloads of its free antivirus software in the week after it shipped.

The company's Security Essentials software is a basic antivirus program designed to appeal to Windows users who don't want to shell out the US$40 to $50 per year that most AV vendors charge. It was launched on Sept. 29, and by Oct. 6, the software had been downloaded more than 1.5 million times, according to a Thursday blog post by Microsoft.

That number jumped to 2.6 million in the first two weeks, an "amazing response" to the product, Microsoft said in an e-mail.

The free AV software has proved popular with Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, which is available to business users now, but set to be made widely available next Thursday. According to Microsoft, 44 percent of users are running Windows 7, followed by XP (33 percent) and then Vista (23 percent).

Though XP is not the most popular platform for Security Essentials, it's where the software is doing the most work. Microsoft counted 4 million total malware detections on more than 500,000 machines during the one-week period; 52 percent of them were on XP machines. Vista was next, with 32 percent of detections, followed by Windows 7, with 16 percent. "This follows our usual observed trend of seeing less malware on newer OSes and service packs," Microsoft said.

The U.S., China and Brazil were the top three countries reporting malware detections, with more than a quarter of all detections occurring in the U.S.

But the nature of the threats varies somewhat from country to country. "Trojans are the top detected category in the U.S., China has lots of potentially unwanted software threats, and worms (particularly Conficker) are very active in Brazil," Microsoft said. "There are also many exploits being encountered in China, which may mean these PCs do not have the latest security updates."

Security Essentials is available in 19 countries.

Antivirus vendors have predictably downplayed the effect of Microsoft's free AV efforts, but the product has received generally favorable reviews as a lightweight but generally effective security product. It competes head-on with AVG's free antivirus software, which has about 85 million users, AVG says.

Obama calls on Americans to help with cybersecurity
Oct 16, 2009 06:18 pm |
In a video address, the president said everyone is responsible for keeping U.S. networks safe
by Nancy Gohring



U.S. President Barack Obama has urged Americans to help guard against cyberattacks in a first-of-its-kind video published on the White House Web site.

“Our digital networks are critical to our national security, our military superiority and public safety. But that dependence also makes us vulnerable to cyberattack from those who would do us harm,” Obama said in the video.

He called the threat of cyberattacks one of the most serious economic and national security challenges faced by the U.S., and urged businesses and individuals to take greater care online.

Obama said he will "soon" appoint a cybersecurity coordinator to lead a new government office responsible for making sure that defending the country’s networks becomes a national security priority.

He first announced the new office in May and has been criticized for not appointing a leader for it sooner. In August, the former head of cybersecurity for the administration resigned and told the Washington Post that she was tired of waiting for the new appointee.

In his video address, which the White House called the first of its kind by a U.S. president, Obama said the private sector, which owns and operates most of the networks, has a responsibility to secure them. He called for public-private partnerships to ensure security and privacy.

“Ultimately it comes down to each of us as individuals,” he said.

He urged people to follow three basic security principles:

--Keep security and software systems up-to-date and beware of suspicious e-mail,

--Always know who you are dealing with online,

--And never give out your personal or financial information until you verify the recipient is legitimate.

The National Cyber Security Alliance praised the president’s call to action.

The White House had earlier designated October as cybersecurity awareness month.

Asterisk teams with IBM for small business VoIP
Oct 16, 2009 05:38 pm |
by Tim Greene


Small businesses can buy open source IP PBX Asterisk software as an add-on to IBM’s Smart Cube office-in-a-box package.

Burning questions about Asterisk open source PBX platform

Digium, which sells a commercial version of Asterisk, customized it to integrate with Smart Cube’s software, making the phone system manageable via Smart Cube’s management interface.

Customers buy the Asterisk application from IBM’s Smart Market, and rely on IBM for support. Digium support staff is on call to IBM for tier 2 support, but customers only have to deal with IBM.

The PBX software is sold in two sizes, for 20 concurrent calls ($2,000) and for 40 concurrent calls ($4,000).

Smart Cube is sold as a hardware platform with a base set of applications on it and a second set of applications available for customers to buy via Smart Market to address their specific business needs.

The Asterisk software can be configure and managed via IBM’s Smart Desk management dashboard, which gives a common look to management of all the Smart Market applications.

The Digium-Asterisk alliance was announced at the 10th anniversary of AstriCon, the annual conference for Asterisk customers, developers and business partners. Attendance was up 10% over last year, and participation in the trade show part of the conference was up 50%, says Danny Windham, CEO of Digium.

Also at the show, Digium previewed Asterisk Marketplace, a site where customers can buy applications to expand the use of Asterisk PBXs. It also announced Asterisk Forge, a site where developers can start, run and maintain Asterisk software projects.

Blogging. Lifestreaming. What's next: Lifelogging!
Oct 16, 2009 05:13 pm |
Capturing and sharing all daily minutiae will soon get automated. Very soon.
by Mike Elgan



Smile when you talk to research legend Gordon Bell. You're on candid camera.

Bell wears two cameras around his neck all his waking hours. One of them he calls a SenseCam. It takes a digital photograph every 20 seconds or so -- all day, every day, year after year. (I'll tell you below how to buy your own SenseCam.) The other camera takes pictures and video only when Bell presses the right buttons.

It's all part of a project Bell calls MyLifeBits. He's documented the project, and made a case for why we'll all have MyLifeBits projects of our own, in a new book called Total Recall: How the E-Memory Revolution Will Change Everything.

The book's official Web site explains the MyLifeBits project:

"MyLifeBits captures and holds a lifetime's worth of articles, books, letters, memos, photos, presentations, music, home movies, and videotaped lectures. Gordon's archive includes phone calls, IM scripts, years of email, web pages visited, and daily activities captured by the SenseCam. One of the challenges of MyLifeBits has been to build applications, e.g. timelines and viewers for people to take their personal memorabilia out of the shoebox and store them digitally for all kinds of future usage from a daily aid to memory through record keeping to immortality."

This automated capture of everything is called Lifelogging. Bell, who works as a principal researcher for Microsoft, is way ahead of everyone. But we're all definitely headed in his direction. Soon enough, lifelogging will go mainstream.

Why you'll lifelog

Many big cultural transformations occur when technology unleashes human nature. The digital technology trends are plain to see. Storage and digital cameras are getting cheaper and smaller. Wireless connectivity is becoming more ubiquitous.

More interestingly, however, cultural trends are all pointing toward an acceptance of lifelogging. People feel compelled to record their lives, and have for millennia. As technology progresses, it gets easier and therefore more popular.

Blogs. Twitter. Facebook. Evernote. Self-photos with camera phones. The use of these sites and of media prove that people instinctively capture more whenever capturing becomes easier.

In fact, the hardest part is coping with the huge variety of ways we can share thoughts and experiences. The state of the art in sharing right now brings all those ways together into a phenomenon called lifestreaming.

Lifestreaming was originally conceptualized as the capturing of all digital "stuff" you create or interact with for your own purposes -- kind of like a very detailed diary. But like blogs, lifestreaming has been co-opted into the social networking impulse. Now, the idea of lifestreaming is to capture your blog and Twitter posts, YouTube uploads, records of what music you listen to, videos you watch, blogs you read and so on. The audience is now both you and your social group. The purpose is identical to the purpose of Twitter and Facebook -- human connection and personal memory.

IBM, Intel executives face insider trading charges
Oct 16, 2009 04:39 pm |
IBM and Intel executive allegedly provided insider information to cause security trades
by Agam Shah



Executives from Intel Capital and IBM face insider trading charges after allegedly scheming to provide information that others used to reap millions of dollars in illegal profits, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

The SEC charged six individuals for conspiring to execute trade securities using confidential information from companies including Intel, Google and Advanced Micro Devices, the SEC said in a press release. Some of the non-public information shared between the individuals related to corporate earnings or takeover activity at companies, SEC said.

Executives charged included Robert Moffatt, senior vice president and executive in IBM's systems and technology group, and Rajiv Goel, who is Intel treasury's managing director of investments. The SEC filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Moffatt and Goel allegedly provided insider information about companies including Sun Microsystems and Intel.

Other individuals charged include Raj Rajaratnam, a portfolio manager with hedge fund Galleon Group, who gained close to $25 million in illegal profits, according to the SEC. Rajaratnam is considered the 559th richest man in the world according to Forbes magazine. Others charged in the complaint include Anil Kumar, a director at McKinsey, and Danielle Chiesi and Mark Kurland of New Castle Funds.

"Raj Rajaratnam is not a master of the universe, but rather a master of the rolodex," said Robert Khuzami, director of the SEC's division of enforcement. "He cultivated a network of high-ranking corporate executives and insiders, and then tapped into this ring to obtain confidential details about quarterly earnings and takeover activity," Khuzami said.

Goel allegedly provided insider tips to Rajaratnam about certain Intel quarterly earnings and a pending joint venture concerning Clearwire, in which Intel has invested, the SEC said. Based on the insider information, Rajaratnam executed trades on Galleon's behalf. The tips netted Goel close to $250,000 in illicit profits after Rajaratnam executed trades for Goel's personal brokerage account based on confidential tips concerning Hilton and PeopleSupport.

Goel has been placed on administrative leave until the company looks into this matter, said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. Intel has not been contacted by authorities about the charges, but will fully cooperate if and when contacted.

The SEC said IBM's Moffatt allegedly provided inside information about Sun Microsystems to New Castle Funds' Chiesi. The information was provided when IBM was considering acquiring Sun. Chiesi allegedly made trades on behalf of New Castle Funds based on the tips and netted about $1 million in profits.

IBM declined comment on the subject.

McKinsey's Kumar allegedly tipped off Rajaratnam about pending transactions involving Advanced Micro Devices and two Abu Dhabi-based "sovereign entities," the SEC said in a release. Rajaratnam then made trades on Galleon's behalf based on the insider information.

Data centers lose an advocate at electric utilities
Oct 16, 2009 04:23 pm |
Mark Bramfitt's departure from PG&E could be a set-back for utilities' IT energy-efficiency programs
by James Niccolai



Mark Bramfitt, who has been an advocate for greater cooperation between data centers and electric utility companies, will leave his job at Pacific Gas & Electric next month, he said on Thursday.

Bramfitt has been a frequent speaker at data center conferences and an active supporter of high-tech rebate programs, in which utility companies provide subsidies for organizations that use energy-saving technologies such as server virtualization and efficient cooling systems.

The program manager for PG&E's high-tech energy efficiency program, he has also been leading the Utility IT Energy Efficiency Coalition, which PG&E set up last year to help other utilities offer similar energy-saving programs. The coalition now has 45 members in the U.S. and Canada.

Bramfitt announced his plan to leave PG&E at the Data Center Energy Efficiency Summit in Sunnyvale, California. He didn't give a reason for his departure, but said it was unclear who will run the utilities coalition after he leaves.

The data center programs can be complex to set up, especially for power companies that have little experience with enterprise IT. Bramfitt has been an "evangelist" who helped other utilities adopt similar models, said Josh Wallace, key account representative for City of Palo Alto Utilities in California.

"PG&E is a test bed. If they try something and it works, we'll do it," he said.

Data centers are big consumers of energy, and the rebate programs help utility companies reduce demand on their networks and potentially avoid having to construct new power plants.

PG&E gave out $7 million in high-tech rebates in 2008, and has set aside a further $50 million through 2012. The payments range from hundreds of dollars for small projects to much larger sums. NetApp received $1.4 million last December for a data center construction project that uses fresh air cooling and other energy-saving techniques.

The utilities need more help to run the programs, however, and Bramfitt encouraged data centers to work more closely with their energy providers. "There is no other utility in the country with more than one person full-time on this," he said Thursday. "The state of the game out there with utilities is really tough."

At the same time, PG&E is expanding its rebate programs to support new products. Next year it will start providing subsidies for Energy Star servers, he said.

"We plan to subsidize the premium for Energy Star servers by writing checks for HP and Dell. They'll say how many they are selling to you, and I'll write them checks so that you will see lower prices for Energy Star servers," Bramfitt said.

PG&E will also make it easier for companies to receive money for virtualization projects. Today they have to apply in advance to receive incentive money; next year they will be able to get rebates for virtualization projects they recently completed, he said.

IBM plans big hardware upgrade next year
Oct 16, 2009 04:21 pm |
Executives said company plans to ship a new mainframe and the Power7 chip
by Patrick Thibodeau


IBM disclosed the plans at a time when server sales among all vendors have taken a bruising during the economic downturn, and IBM is no exception. In a third quarter earnings call yesterday, said Mark Loughridge, IBM's chief financial officer, said that the company's third quarter mainframe revenue declined by 26% from the year-earlier period.

Nonetheless, Loughridge said IBM is optimistic about the hardware business in the near future in a climate of what he called a return to "general stability."

The new Power7 chip will offer up to eight cores and increase support for virtualized environments, executives said. IBM has slowly be releasing specs for Power7, which it says will support 1,000 virtualized machines, almost four times the 254 supported by the dual core Power6 chip that was released in 2007. IBM's Power chips support AIX, Linux and the older System I computers.

IBM released its last mainframe, the z10 , in February, 2008, and typically releases a new mainframe every three years. If it keeps with that schedule, the new mainframe probably won't be shipping until late next year.

Gordon Haff, an analyst at Illuminata Inc. in Nashua, N.H., said IBM's next mainframes may help users cut costs by allowing them to move some of the mainframe processing to IBM x86 systems. In a hybrid system, the mainframe may handle the service management and data storage with the x86 systems performing some of computational work, said Haff.

IBM has tried to cut user costs in the current mainframe line by using specialty processing engines, such the Linux IFL processor.

The ability to offload mainframe work to the x86 systems of multiple vendors is one of the reasons cited by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) trade group in its effort to trigger a new antitrust inquiry into IBM practices by the Department of Justice. The trade group claims that IBM is blocks third party vendors from offering such an offloading capability.

Rich Partridge, an analyst at Ideas International Inc. in Rye Brook, N.Y., said that with increases in throughput and processing power in the next mainframe, IBM will probably encourage users to replace servers with mainframes to cut back on data center sprawl. The argument for "more centralized computing infrastructure will play to the mainframe," he said.

IBM's planned hardware improvements come as Oracle Corp. outlines more of its plan to integrate Sun Microsystems Inc. once its deal to buy the struggling computer maker closes. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison went into overdrive about IBM at company's annual conference OpenWorld, vowing to vanquish IBM.

PayChoice breached for the second time this month
Oct 16, 2009 04:10 pm |
Weakness in password reset function may have been problem
by Jaikumar Vijayan

For the second time this month , PayChoice Inc., a large online provider of payroll processing services, has had to shut down its online portal because of a security breach.

The company said its Online Employer site was "briefly taken offline" Thursday as the result of a security breach discovered a day earlier. The company did not identify what the problem was, but said that it had deployed additional security measures to protect client data after it identified a "key mechanism" used by online attackers.

PayChoice, based in Moorestown, N.J, provides payroll processing services and technology. The company bills itself as the "national leader" in the payroll services and software industry and claims over 125,000 business customers.

A story in the Washington Post quoted from a letter PayChoice sent to its customers saying the breach appeared to be linked to the password reset function on the portal. Those responsible for the breach appear to have stolen login IDs and passwords belonging to customers by exploiting a weakness in the function, the Post reported. The company has disabled the change password capability on the site and modified all login IDs as a result of the intrusion.

The valid login credentials of an employee at one of PayChoice's customers was used to add fictitious employees to that customer's payroll in an attempt to have payments made to fraudulent bank accounts, PayChoice confirmed today.

Steve Friedl, an independent security analyst and a consultant with a PayChoice competitors, said the attackers may have used a SQL injection attack to steal the information. Though he has no direct knowledge of the breach, chances are high that SQL injection techniques were used, said Frield who has provided examples of how it can be done on his blog .

Incidents such as these highlight the need for companies to use multi-factor authentication for controlling access to critical accounts, said Lawrence Levine, president of FireID, a South Africa-based vendor that sells a phone-based, one-time password product. The apparent ability of hackers to access accounts simply by entering a valid username and password shows why companies need additional authentication measures such as a token-based or one-time password mechanism, he said.

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), a council set up to develop standards for auditing financial institutions, has in recent years urged financial institutions to implement strong authentication mechanisms. As far back as 2005, the FFIEC issued a set of guidelines that called on banks to stop relying just on usernames and passwords and implement a third authentication measure.