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http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/ labor/story/0,10801,105645,00.html

Your government at work... for Microsoft.

MySQL ABs collaboration with SAP brought them onto Larry's radar. This brought danger to Oracle from two directions:
1) A general strengthening of SAP's offering
2) The possibility of a new DB option for SAP implementations that might have been deployed on Oracle

This is both a kick in the guts to a new upstart (MySQL AB) with the added benefit of a kick in the balls to an old enemy (SAP).

Along these lines, beyond hacks used by microprocessors today, there's been work on how best to multi-task, and also related work on how to best spend any idle time. Bob Metcalfe and Eric Horvitz have worked on this:

http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/1161/IWD000925opmetc alfe_cto/

http://www.computerworld.com/printthis/2002/0,4814 ,67156,00.html

http://research.microsoft.com/~horvitz/ccprinciple s.htm

The AJAX acronym was born on Feb. 18, 2005, when it first appeared in a paper titled "Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications", which was written by Jesse James Garrett, a founder of Web consultancy Adaptive Path LLC. The term has generated a lot of buzz among developers and bloggers so far this year, but it's only the name that's new.

Isn't it weird how several people, in almost unison, just suddenly decided: "Hey software developers need to be held liable for bugs in their code." It makes you wonder about their backgrounds (read second paragraph). I'm sure this has nothing to do with open source software developers being financially incapable of being held liable for flaws in software they donated. On the other side, I do agree that closed source (AND ONLY CLOSED SOURCE) software makers should definetely be held liable, as there is no other means of recourse in the event of software failure. Whereas, open source license or not, spells out exactly what it will do, line-for-line, and you can either take it or leave it.

Some more information on where the ex- came from (and where else he's an ex-) might be enlightening.

Those numbers are misleadingly wrong. Star Wars Episode III was rendered between the old ILM location and the new Presidio facility. The Presidio has about 4000 processors used for rendering, while old ILM had about 2,500 processors. The data center of the Presidio came online (I think) late last year. So frames from Ep. 3 and The Island were rendered both at the Presidio and old ILM. So surely ILM rendered Ep. 3 on a few thousand processors.

I think the misleading part is that some articles stated that the initial order for AMD Opteron based machines for the data center was 140 processors. But their renderfarm is crtainly 4,000 procs which I think includes about 1,000 workstations that are used for overnight rendering.

Data Center Gets Star Treatment

Also while ILM does have an Opteron based renderfarm they run Linux on them, not Windows64 beta.

Already done to death. Szulik is a little late.

Here are some better articles.

Yes, fake fingerprints or retina are a problem for biometrics.

But, a bigger problem (for now) is someone cracking your database of biometric data, and being able to retrieve the information you store to identify people. This is why there is research into Replaceable Biometrics.

If the stored database cannot be related to the person, then again a criminal is forced to go directly to the source (you) to copy or steal the finger or retina. Ideally, they would then be stopped by not knowing your password, or not having your key. If a criminal has all three, such as by kidnapping your children and forcing you to retrieve the data yourself, then there is still a fourth identification option:

* Something you do (i.e. something out of the ordinary that draws attention to yourself)

If you walk in and say "Hello Bob" to the security guard every day, and today you say "Hello Jim", maybe he will know something is up and alert the police. Or, maybe the security guard simply notices that you are sweating or looking very nervous, and investigates without you intentinally alerting him at all.

Microsoft's biggest problem in this regard is that everyone is seen as an enemy, and everything is seen as a threat. If Steve Ballmer actually had a brain in his head, he might realise a couple of things:-

1) Microsoft CAN'T be everywhere at once. It isn't possible. They can't be developing new operating systems, upgrading Office, creating development software, and conquering the Web all at once.

2) Because of 1, other companies are going to be in some computer-related niche somewhere.

Microsoft and google are in direct competition with each other as they both have the same objective.

Googles mission statement is to quote their company overview page....

...to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful

Windows currently runs on most household computers and in many of the worlds offices, allowing people to organise and manage their data.... Surely you can see they both have the same goal. And as you can see by Googles own words as you put it they want to be everywhere.

Why ? Because lets face it one of these guys eventually will be everywhere cause people are essentially lazy and just want systems that do for them exactly what they need them to do with the minimum amount of effort. The average consumer wants his computer to be as easy to use as a telephone and still be able to perform any task he might think it could do for him. He also doesn't really want competition, that'd mean having to think about which system is the best and checking to see if it works with all their business partners, family and friends systems. Utimately... just as in highlander "There can only be one !". And Microsoft and Google aren't the only ones who believe this to be true.

Whilst it's not all the fault of the credit card companies, Credit Card Security is nothing better than pathetic.

You don't need to look far to see stories about millions of credit card details getting stolen, or Hotel chains putting full unencrypted card details and address information on their swipe cards. Whilst Google, Yahoo and major search engines are very good now at filtering them from their results, online shopping sites for small businesses are still lax in their security by having their online order files with customer names, addresses and credit card details freely downloadable (if you know the URL), often in something as simple as a CSV file maintained by FrontPage extensions.

So why would Johnny Hacker spend time and money acquiring an RFID Card Reader so he can tour buses and trains to swipe card details for a few individuals, with the increased risk of getting caught, when he can stay in front of his computer to get hundreds, thousands or millions of cardholder details with far more ease? Again I say: The issue of Card ID theft isn't really that much more than it already is.

What bullshit. Up until the Dell reference I saw your point, but you cannot tell me that a G5 case is not cooler, better laid-out, easier to upgrade etc than a typical PC case. That is simply not true. I can open the thing in 2 seconds flat with no tools and it is super quiet. Tons of space inside, a really superior layout. I mean go look at it! When was the last time you saw a PC case that looks like that?

And BTW, undermining your point, that is no Asus motherboard. Jee-zus. It kills me that you complain of misinformed Apple zealots and yet you don't have the technical wherewithal to recognize a motherboard. Normally I wouldn't be so beliggerant in tone but you are way, way off the mark my friend. In my humble opinion.

It is largely a well propogated myth that 'Apple hardware' is in any way better than that of other brands and there can certainly be no real claim of innovation in the industrial design department outside of superficial stylistic impositions on case and chassis design. Where cooling is concerned it can safely be said that the powerbooks are perhaps the most poorly designed of any portable's I've come across; many colleagues in fact prop their's up on a book just to allow for air to circulate underneath the thing.

It is a largely propagated myth that there is no difference at all - and by the way, if that were true, would you not be criticizing the computer industry as a whole then?)The G5: Check the decibel levels. Check the layout and the schematic. Check the connectors. Check the ports. Observe how RAM is installed. What you say is not true. And I am not an 'apologist', you will have to do better than that. As for PowerBooks, also not true. They get warm, I agree (particularly the 12-inch model if you are charging and working at the same time) but we've all seen the reports of guys burning their nuts on regular PC laptops. Since we're playing Dueling Anecdotes here, I will just say my experience has been totally different with the Macs we have at work.

One more thing: go look up customer satisfaction surveys across top-tier computer manufacturers. Guess who is #1.

No wonder they can't protect their databases http://www.computerworld.com/databasetopics/data/s tory/0,10801,96900,00.html they spend their time doing earthshattering research such as this.

To "be more productive", one must trim the fat.

Well, Carly certainly trimmed the fat profit margins by buying Compaq and getting into the no-margin commodity PC business. HP is in disarray. They have ticked off a lot of formerly loyal business users. They apparently have no control over their inventory any longer. I've been told three times in two weeks that a part has shipped, and it still hasn't. Even at the supervisor level, there isn't anyone who can call up the warehouse and ask what the heck is going on. After the third time and a flamed supervisor, my "ticket" got "escalated". Woohoo, I'm a happy HP customer now. Not.

For the record, here's what I said about IBM's 500 patents in January:
NOSOFTWAREPATENTS.COM CRITICIZES IBM FOR "DIVERSIONARY TACTICS"
By the time I issued those comments, I didn't even know that those 500 IBM patents were mostly patents on the verge of expiration, and included many patents that had little to do with software, including various medical (!) technology patents.

Like Bruce Perens, I also criticized the recent OSDL announcement:
eWeek: OSDL Begins Open-Source Patent Commons

What's the point in those patent pledges? The only "value" in it is minimal. It's that some companies which are friendly toward OSS anyway make some formal promise not to use certain patents against certain open-source programs under certain open-source licenses, if not under certain circumstances. Companies either give away patents of hardly any value (like IBM did) or they tie their pledge to an open-source license that hardly anybody uses (like SUN did). Some of those pledges are legally pretty meaningless because of some loopholes that leave lots of room for interpretation.

The only meaningful contributions of patents to OSS would be donations of patents that serve the purpose mutually assured destruction, i.e.
(i) they are irrecovably made available for use by open-source developers or a trusted open-source entity against potential aggressors;
(ii) they constitute monopolies on technical features that would really be hurtful to a company like Microsoft; and
(iii) are not already subject to cross-licensing agreements between large corporations.

Anything less than that is of very little value and on the bottom line even negative because it diverts attention from what really needs to be done. Let's face it: No OSS developer is really going to look up something like an OSDL patent pledge database to find out which patents one is allowed to use. That's not practical. The problem is that too many critical patents are held by entities that are hostile toward OSS and are never ever going to pledge even a single patent.

An HP executive actually made a suggestion that potentially meets the criteria I outlined:
Moving on With Patents and Open-Source Software

I don't want to count any chickens before they're hatched, and with a highly complex legal issue like this it always depends upon a careful analysis of the specific terms an conditions, but HP's proposal to build up a patent arsenal that OSS can use for retaliatory purposes is infinitely more compelling that all of those patent pledges combined. It deserves further discussion and thought.

You are correct about the marketshare. Howerver, I wasn't far off.

http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/mac os/story/0,10801,100548,00.html

http://www.firstadopter.com/fa/archives/000754.htm l

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jun 2003/tc20030618_7983_tc056.htm

They went down to just above 2%. Now that they are abandoning the PPC and switching over to X86 what do you think their sales will be for the next few quarters?

• Air Force notifies over 33 thousand Airmen that their personal information is comprimised
• Serious flaw in CPAINT allows hackers the run malicious code on servers, including Google, MSN, AOL, and more.

Yahoo switches to Linux, drops FreeBSD

Now that's a vote of confidence!

Did you take a look at the Blue Security site and see how their technology works? The spammers are not getting spammed in return...the Blue Frog program essentially sends an automated "Opt Out" to the spammers; if they fail to respond and the recipient continues to receive mail from that spammer then Blue Frog submits complaints to the MERCHANT SITE.

I would hardly call any of this vigilantism. One spam - one opt-out request. Continue to ignore those requests? Complaint to the merchant paying the spammer to spam.

Sounds like a great solution. I wish they made a linux client.

...then the government involvement will probably have a negative effect on all of us.

Some people would say that the "government involvement" has already had a negative effect.

Don't get too excited! According to Broadband Reports and ComputerWorld: "The streak of Mozilla's Firefox browser gaining market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer has come to a grinding halt in July. For the first time since Firefox Version 1.0 made its debut, Internet Explorer was able to regain some lost ground. Firefox's market share shrunk to 8.07% in July from 8.71% in June, while Internet Explorer grew its share to 87.2% in July from 86.56% the previous month."

They do have every right, legally speaking. It's not a feature of Slashdot or internet culture, it's a feature of the American style of government. Ethically speaking, most security researchers disclose responsibly anyway - they give the company a month or so to fix the problem before telling the world. I, and probably most slashdotters, would agree that telling world+wife before the company producing the software has had a fair bash at the problem is a little off, if only because a lot of us know what it's like to be in the company's position.

In fact, it's essential to have a healthy population of security researchers finding flaws and (eventually) making them public, because it stops companies sitting on their arses for months or otherwise playing silly buggers

See: Yahoo Switches to Linux

http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/uni x/story/0,10801,103779,00.html

With that gold suit he has a new life as an Elvis impersonator ahead of him methinks

Jonathan

http://www.justgofaster.com/

After basically ignoring the SCO UNIX market and worse -- attacking some of his best customers, Darl is doing a volte-face. The key question is: WHY?

Is this a concession that attacking Linux (via IBM) has failed? Or a merely a feint? Is he trying to window-dress SCO for some other buyer? Time will tell

Darl McBride's PR campaign never ceases to amaze me. It's hard to imagine how one person can come up with so much BS.

It's because he knows he'd better start making some real money real soon:

If Novell gets the preliminary injunction it's asking for, SCO will no longer have any money. None. SCO would be out of business -- something IBM, Red Hat, AutoZone and DaimlerChrysler could never have made happen. (from Novell to SCO Group: Drop Dead)

I believe the Safeway effort was set-up with assistance from Tesco (market leading British supermarket chain). Here's a link with the original story : http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/ebus iness/story/0,10801,62175,00.html/ I beleive Tesco started their online Grocery service in 1999 (or thereabouts) with limited coverage (proximkity to certain pilot stores), from day one they used the lcoal stores and their personnel as the storage/packing/delivery infrastructure. For me this is one particular company that in recent years has done almost everything right, Wikipedia entry here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesco_Personal_Financ e

You do realise that most if not all graphics card/chipset manufacturers provide their own implementations of OpenGL with their drivers, don't you? That this is only going to apply to the system default drivers that no-one who cares in the least about performance is going to be using?

European governments are starting to wise up that transfering as much as 0.3% of GDP to the United States in Windows licenses is not a smart move.

Can you give any references for that figure please? According to the CIA world factbook, our GDP is $ 1,782,000,000,000 - are you really suggesting that we spend more than $5,300,000,000 on Windows licences? According to computerworld, MS's revenue for 2004 (total, not just for Windows) was $36.8 billion; that would mean (according to your figures) that the UK was providing well in excess of 14% of MS's revenue...

Not only that, but Massport was one of the parties! Computerworld had background on the FCC ruling about airport WiFi

Varun, meet Douglas!

I'm sure you two will get along famously.

the guys sounds like a bit of an asshole apologist for 'Big Brother' No, the guy sounds like a realist. Scott "Privacy is dead, get over it" McNealy sounds much more like an asshole apologist for Big Brother!

saying that E-Bay uses ISAPI / C may be oversimplifying things. I see that some of their url's still include isapi.dll, which does suggest using ISAPI. But they had gone on the public record a few years ago as saying they were migrating to Java / J2EE, specifically IBM WebSphere software.

http://computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/a ppdev/story/0,10801,63692,00.html

I would guess that they're actually using a mix of technologies. Any insiders have any insight they can share? Even anonymously?

For FreeBSD, that was the last of the Mohicans. That should be in the status report.

" . . . in December, Yahoo started to port its homegrown infrastructure applications from its custom operating system to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0, which was in beta at the time and was released last week. Plans call for a gradual migration of more applications to Linux."

As far as electronic vaulting, Iron Mountain is the leader in the industry. They are also the leader in offsite data protection. The company is very interesting, having been founded shortly after WWII during the cold war era, they built a huge underground facility which was literally a miniature city underground, the idea being that in the event of a nuclear war, all the top executives and financial leaders from banks and other federal institutions would be relocated to the secure facility, where backup mainframes and copies of all the data would allow the federal reserve to continue to operate during nuclear winter.

The company I work for uses them for offsiting tapes, but the e-vaulting option looks appealing and we may start doing that. Some of the highlights of the e-vaulting solution they offer are AES-256 encryption, a native client for Linux, Windows, Unix, and just about any other platform, and a proven track record when it comes to data protection. Find out more here: Link to click on

Also, if you're interested in reading the fascinating history of Iron Mountain, I found this article especially interesting to read.

Better information can be found on eWeek and Computerworld.

In short it looks like HP is holding a competing conference. Other user groups, like Encompass, are working w/ HP on this new conference.

DHS has had a "cybersecurity" chief for years. The first one, Richard Clarke (with years of counterterrorism experience in successive White Houses), quit in disgust after his work and warnings were ignored. His successor, Amit Yoran left Symantec's security division for DHS, then quit in disgust after his work and warnings were ignored. Every cybersecurity czar has quit in disgust, saying the job was impossible. Now we've got a new guy, in a newly "tweaked" position, to be the cybersecurity czar. Stewart Baker was the NSA lawyer who championed the Clipper Chip, key escrow, and the "trust the government" approach to info security - while attacking crypto like PGP as a threat to national security.

Somehow, I don't feel any safer with failed spook lawyers taking over from the counterterrorism and cybersecurity professionals.

HP never bought insurance from SCO. HP was going to, and then backed out at the last minute and announced indemnification for their customers.

Click here for story

HP probably felt that by paying the insurance instead of offering indemnification, they would be admitting guilt. They probably also have access to the source code and did their own audit of Linux and gave the green light.

Ovum has also said: "Microsoft's .NET technology is at least six months ahead of its rivals" ... "It's more complete, more ready and more widely deployed than any of its web services framework competitors". http://www.aspstreet.com/pr/a.taf/idpr,61991

And: "The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) is a "doomed" technology that has no hope of matching Microsoft Corp.'s Distributed Common Object Model (DCOM), according to a new report on middleware. "http://www.computerworld.com/news/1997/story/0,11 280,21627,00.html

Apple replacing PPC with Intel as a CPU, OK.
Apple replacing their motherboards with off-the shelf? They're no longer a hardware manufacturer.

Yes, Apple is rumored to be looking at using some method to cripple the OS so that it only runs on their hardware, but who out there wants to buy something that's purposefully crippled? Just the perception alone is enought to kill any interest--I'm paying for something that is purposefully debilitated? No thanks. This will be especially true when other systems will not have such burdensome, restrictive features.

With PPC, at least there was a fairly high technical obstacle to keep Apple in the hardware business, which is where the real revenues are significantly higher (hence Larry Ellison's interest in launching Pillar Data -- story)

So yes, it's not necessarily just about which CPU Apple uses. I think the crippleware aspect is the most troubling consequence of the switch.

I know that's a relatively intangible question to quantify but I did find a survey that lists different programming languages used in the workplace. Seems as if C++ definitely isn't dying just yet. I found another seemingly google-based article on the popularity of various programming languages. Sure Java and C# are up there with PHP thrown in as well, but C++ still has lots of current uses. Seeing I am hooked on Ruby in my workplace I am one of the few according to all of these figures :-)

http://www.computerworld.com/networkingtopics/netw orking/story/0,10801,102635,00.html?source=x10 So when a NIC is made for linux first, this is how much is costs.

For those admins who tend to a small MS shop and don't have the need for an expensive patch management solution, WSUS was released last week to replace the lame SUS (Software Update Services). I had to disable SUS due to some GPO issues, so I'm looking forward to checking out WSUS. And with this round of patches, it seems like the ideal time to test.

I think SAIC's failure to execute is in small part due to the underpinning technology, in large part due to an FBI leadership that was not on the same page, but mostly due to the fact that the management of this project was mishandled.

SAIC is certainly not blameless, but I think this is a pretty good summary of what happened. The biggest problem was the FBI trying to add major new requirements to an existing project as a response to 9/11. Agreed, SAIC should have said no, but what defense contractor does that when talking to the government?

• Have a video that documents the iPod was designed as a disposable item.
  
• Subsequently reward Apple with record sales and then
• Sue Apple for selling disposable iPods.

Maybe they stopped doing this, or toned it down to a large extent, but this is not a new story.
Amazon charging different prices on some DVDs

Which Price is Right?
Same Part, Same Supplier, Different Prices

I'm not surprised this is happens (especially price differences between online and brick stores (why not? a large chain like walmart or target will have difference prices across the country)), I'm not surpised most people don't expect this, but I would think the folks around here would accept as given this is the way these companies do busniness. (I'm not saying necessary accept as okay, just accept that they do it.)

The news here is not the business practice, the news is a study on few people know about it.

Computerworld's take on the story was a dose of ice cold water:

Windows Server 2003, DataCenter Server and Windows Server 2003, Enterprise Edition are all selling well, according to IDC's enterprise group chief, Jean S. Bozman.

Bozman also said that she could not see Linux overtaking either Windows or Unix in the foreseeable future, mainly because Linux is starting from such a small base. As a result, she could not project out far enough to see Linux overtaking either of the other two main operating systems.

So if IDC is to be believed, the world's favorite open-source operating system is destined to remain a niche product serving Web pages for the time being, while Microsoft makes hay with its core product. It has been a long time since this reporter was able to ask Microsoft representatives if they still believe that Microsoft will ever succeed in the enterprise. It looks like it now has. Microsoft server software challenges Linux offerings

Java fanbois beating off to everything Java doesn't make parent a troll. Scumbag Scott "Privacy is dead, get over it" McNealy wants us to carry smart ID cards and implant ID chips in our children. Except now the buck-toothed assmaster isn't getting his way in having it all Java-based. Maaajor blow to the buck-toothed assmaster, its overripe organization, its poor employees, and the idiot investors that are still hanging on.

Bruce Schneier wrote a great summary of what made this worm special here. It's true that Witty didn't get as much press coverage as some; it really deserved to get more. The whole thing fit inside one UDP packet (like SQL Slammer) and it ramped up very quickly given that it only targeted a small fraction of Internet hosts (those running a couple of ISS products). And it was destructive to the host without harming its ability to spread. Rather breathtaking.