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Yahoo to Google: It's usability, stupid! (video)
Google may have an overwhelming market share in the online search market, the company has been famously incapable of making as much as a dent in areas such as web mail, or instant messaging.
Yahoo's Jeff Bonforte today offered some free advice on what caused this failure: a complete lack of usability.
Google is ruled by engineers, but they make for a lousy target audience because they will try any new application that has a blinking light and makes rattling sounds. The challenge is to get to the masses.
In the video below Bonforte explains the challenges that Yahoo is facing, as well as Google's faillure in web usability.
February 28, 2007 at 05:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
The chipwars will continue
Intel today unveiled plans to convert its existing 90nm chip factory near Albuquerque, New Mexico into a 45nm facility. Construction on the $1bn to $1.5bn project is scheduled to start late 2008.
The move hardly comes as a surprise: Intel has always had four semiconductor fabs ready within one year after switching chip manufacturing technologies. The New Mexico plant simply provides the last piece of the puzzle.
The good news for consumers is that AMD also is preparing to have two 45nm fabs ready by 2008, and will rely on Charter Semiconductor to provide additional production capacity.
Users, in other words, can expect a flood of 45nm processors to hit the market in the coming years, causing prices to come down at an unprecedented level.
Quad core processors for everyone! And go short on your Intel and AMD stock.
Intel chief executive Paul Otellini with an image of Intel's first 45nm "Penryn" chip in the back
February 27, 2007 at 01:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Apple's TiVo rip-off gets delayed
Apple needs more time to figure out how to build a user friendly set top box that provides users with access to the digital media on their desktop computers.
The Apple TV was promised to start shipping by February but will now be delayed by an estimated two weeks.
It is unlikely that few people outside of the army of Mac fans will notice. The Apple TV is a $299 media adapter that provides access to a user's digital photos, music and video as well as podcasts.
Support for iTunes content, including DRM-ed video and music would be the main benefit. But its missing a digital video recorder that would allow users to record and play back television shows.
TiVo will sell you a box that will record your TV shows and that offers all of the Apple TV features except for iTunes DRM support. It will even offer a video download service together with Amazon that will launch in the future.
And if you prefer to avoid TiVo's monthly subscription fee, you can opt for one of the many media adapters. Starting at $60 for a model that supports music and photo streaming, you can go all the up to the $349 Netgear Digital Entertainer HD that will hook you up with Youtube shows on your TV, as well as digital movies, music and images.
Apple probably does have one thing going for its however. Setting up a third party media adapter can be a royal pain in the you-know-where. The Apple TV is sure to work brilliantly provided you don't venture outside of Apple's nicely decorated walled garden.
February 27, 2007 at 01:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Servers are back
Server sales have finally broken the dotcom sales record. Companies in 2006 spent $52.3bn on the power hungry boxes, according to the latest IDC date.
And just like Sun Microsystems was hit hardest by the server sales decline after the internet bubble burst, the company is now first in line to profit from its rebounce. The system maker grew sales by 15.4 per cent to surpass Dell for the number 3 spot.
The 2006 data has "market shift" written all over it. Companies aren’t buying more servers so much as that they are buying more expensive ones. That bodes well for companies with a legacy of system building, while box pushers suffer the consequences of focusing on volume and failing to innovate. Sun again is the obvious winner, while HP and IBM failed to even keep pace with the average market growth.
The reason for all this server joy apparently is virtualization. Consolidating several boxes on a single, bigger server makes for lower energy bills and easier maintenance. We've been talking about it for years, but server buyers only now are starting to implement it.
Blade servers did well too, despite HP's Anne Livermore embracing the firm's c-Class systems as if it had some infectious disease at a launch event
February 27, 2007 at 12:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Digg is the new Apple
Digg users are increasingly turning into a vigilante mob that will jump to the site's defense at it sees fit.
A recent example is found in a Digg submission that blasts Yahoo for "shamelessly" ripping of Digg and bragging about it. The rant referred Yahoo's suggestion board, that allows users to submit suggestions for site enhancements and lets other users vote on it. Yahoo readily admits that the service offers "Digg-style voting".
The most famous outbreak of Digg user fury targeted AOL when the company redesigned its Netscape.com portal as a Digg.com copycat for general news (Digg at the time offered mostly technology links).
But why do Digg users claim that they have a moral ownership of Ajax powered voting boxes, rounded corners or social bookmarking? Digg didn't invent any of those features, it just happened to create the most user friendly implementation. Calling something a Digg ripoff is a stretch of the imagination.
The Digg vigilantes are starting to resemble the Mac fan boys. Apple users proudly proclaim that Windows Vista is copying design features from OS X, but they conveniently fail to notice that Apple didn't invent items like Dashboard (sidebar in Vista) or desktop search technology either.
In both cases, the loyalty seems to stem from the underdog effect. Apple nearly got crushed by the PC, Microsoft and its own management. Digg currently is the only major social bookmarking websites that remained independent – Wired.com owner CondeNet acquired Reddit and Yahoo has snapped up Del.icio.us. Digg is the only one that has a moral claim on being community driven, not money driven.
But an army of overly vocal backers doesn't mean that you are right.
Oh no, a site that allows users to indicate that they like a story or idea. How dare they!
February 24, 2007 at 01:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
SETI@home finally finds something
James Melin, a government employed software programmer from Minnesota, has the honour of being the first person to put the Seti@Home programme to good use.
The software helped the developer retrieve a laptop that was stolen on 1 January.
The software automatically starts up and connects to the server whenever it has an internet connection. So Melin monitored the Seti@Home log files to pin down the IP address for his machine. He forwarded the data to the police which subpoenaed the internet provider to give them the subscriber's address.
A few days later, Melin had his laptop back. The contents of the hard drive was intact, except for the addition of a dozen rap songs. But it did contain his wife's novels and screenplays.
Which just goes to show that having a geek husband goes a long way. "I always knew that a geek would make a great husband," she told the Associated Press. "He always backed up all my data, but this topped it all. It became like `Mission: Impossible' for him, looking for hard evidence for the cops to use. ... He's a genius -- my hero."
The Search for ExtraTerrestrial Life (SETI) however still has to yield any direct results.
Millions of public funds finally get put to good use
February 23, 2007 at 12:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hacker nabs child porn lovers: a case of pick your poison
The conviction of a Ronald Kline for possession of child pornography poses a moral dilemma in online security. Because the evidence in the case was collected by a hacker who illegally broke into Kline's computer.
The former judge has to serve a 27 month jail term and will a registered sex offender for the remainder of his life. The hacker, then 20-year-old Bard William from Canada, broke into his computer by posting a specially crafted file on a mailing list popular with child pornography downloaders.
There is no excuse for Kline's actions. But William is just as guilty of crafting malware and breaking into innocent people's computers.
If President Bush doesn't have the right to spy on US citizens, some random kid from a Canadian basement should be banned from those practices as well. Yet no legal charges have been filed against William, where at least Kline would have a very strong case against him.
He's doing his superman thing again...
February 23, 2007 at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How not to grow your VoIP business
Etrade during the dotcom boom would pay new clients hundreds of dollars to sign up for a new stock trading account. The reasoning was that otherwise the company would have to pay an equal sum on traditional marketing to lure in new clients.
Vonage should consider adopting a similar strategy, now that the company's customer acquisition costs have jumped to $306 for each new account. At $25 per month, the company will suffer a loss on every client that cancels his account within one year – not factoring in maintenance, network traffic and customer service costs.
Instead of spending hundreds of dollars on television commercials and seedy adware banners, Vonage might just as well pay new subscribers $200 for a two year commitment.
The provider doesn't seem to have much choice. Deep pocketed providers such as cable provider Comcast have kicked off an aggressive VoIP offensive that makes Vonage look pale by comparison.
(disclaimer: I cancelled my personal Vonage account earlier this year after the company claimed it would take 1.5 months to port over my number to a competing service)
February 22, 2007 at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Britney Spears' hair goes online
The valued readers of this blog of course have better things to do than to scan all the latest news around Britney Spears, but you might want to know that the pop idol on Friday cut off all her hair.
Esther Tognozzi, the owner of the hair salon where it all took place now is auctioning off the goods on a special website. The bidding starts at $1m. She originally listed the goods on Ebay, but that auction soon was canceled.
In other news, Spears on Wednesday checked out of a rehabilitation clinic only hours after she had entered it. So our "hit me baby one more time" girl is doing just fine.
Wait... how is this related to high tech? Oh, wait, Ebay.
Think of the wonderful things that you could do with Britney's hair
February 22, 2007 at 01:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Google Desktop falls victim to XSS flaw
Online attackers can gain access to the Google Desktop application through a cross site scripting attack, researchers at Watchfire have discovered.
We've seen cross site scripting vulnerabilities before, but this one is amazingly easy to demonstrate on your home or office computer, provided that you are running Google Desktop and haven't just updated it.
Curious? Go to your Google Desktop search page and type in the following:
under:<script>alert(This is all it takes)</script>
Once you enter that instruction, an alert box will pop up with the text "This is all it takes" inside. Displaying an alert box might not be anything serious, but that attacker can also insert more harmful commands that can expose confidential information, or worse.
Now go to Google and download the latest Google Desktop update.
February 22, 2007 at 01:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Florence Night-Intel
Intel unveiled the first tablets to emerge for its mobile clinical assistant (MCA) platform.
The Motion Computing C5 is designed to reduce medical errors by allowing nurses to wirelessly upload a patient's vital scans on location rather than transcribe the data and manually upload it later.
The first C5 tablets are currently being tested at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. Jump for a video of the C5's formal introduction and a shot of the device in action.
February 21, 2007 at 01:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Our blades are watching you...
On Friday IBM hosted an event to hype up its Blade.org project. The site was founded as a way to connect developers, systems vendors, and venture capitalists for projects based on blade servers. Among those systems showcased was a blade-based surveillance system from DataCom.
The system allows facilities such as museums and casinos to control thousands of surveillance cameras in one blade server system. Jump for a video of the DataCom system in action.
February 21, 2007 at 01:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
It is an SMS world
Consumers last year spent $47.5bn on text messages and that number is set to increase by another 10 per cent to $52.5 by 2007, according to Portio Research. By 2012 people will send an unimaginable 3.7 trillion messages, the study projects.
For your reference, people spent slightly more money on SMS messages than they paid Microsoft in 2006 (revenues: $44,3bn).
That's an impressive accomplishment for a technology that has turned millions of people from spelling properly.
February 21, 2007 at 12:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Myspace accounts! Beautiful fresh Myspace accounts! 1.1 cents each!
Creating a fresh Myspace account to spam the online networking site is for sissies. The pros buy hacked user accounts by the dozen and use those to spread their adverts for v1agra and other goods.
According to McAfee's Avert Labs blog, a single account goes for slightly more than 1 cent, although the data is sold in batches of 1,000.
Selling credit card numbers still is far more profitable: on average they rake in $7 to $15 each.
But a hacked Myspace account still has some use. MySpace apparently is facing a moral dilemma and won't shut down hacked accounts of genuine users. A spam account is shut down in no time.
And most users furthermore are clueless about what is going on anyway. After all, computers do weird things all the time.
image borrowed from McAfee Avert Labs blog
February 20, 2007 at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Malware slips through Windows Live Messenger
Just because you trust CNN, doesn't mean you should trust the banner ads that you see on the CNN.com website. In a nutshell that's the conclusion that can be drawn after an incident with Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger over the past few days.
The messenger software served up advertisements for so-called scare-ware: software that claims to offer free security scans and magically spots numerous viruses. It then scares the user in purchasing a commercial version of the security software to clean up the phantom mess.
Microsoft is scared and promised a review of its advertising process. But if rogue advertisers can slip through this time, they no doubt will be able to do again in the future. They may not be able to fool Windows Live Messenger a second time, but there are plenty of other victims waiting to be had.
The online security scare isn't going away. We're just beginning.
February 20, 2007 at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Says the mouse to the elephant: I'm going to kill you!
After the rise of Cisco forced Alcatel and Lucent into an uneasy merger, the two are now vowing to kill the monster that killed it.
Alcatel and Lucent is a merger where 1+1=1. Scale is the only benefit, and such mergers have a horrible track record by destroying customer and shareholder value.
But we have yet to meet the first company that simply decides to turn off its lights and disappear. Instead you need a fancy marketing campaign with lots of drum rolls and waving feathers.
Not that Cisco isn't vulnerable. The networking giant is raking in record profit margins on its core routing and switching business, while investing billions in emerging markets such as home entertainment and $280,000 telepresence systems (two or more required).
But the way to beat Cisco is by out-innovating them rather than claiming that your boxes works slightly better than your competitors. It's the difference between showing vision and faking it.
All bark and no bite?
February 17, 2007 at 01:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Ballmer: don't get your Vista hopes up too much
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent his company stock price down on Friday after he cautioned that Windows Vista won't have much of an impact on overall PC sales for the coming years.
While it's easy to jump to conclusions that Ballmer dismissed the benefits of the new operating system on PC sales, anybody who reads the transcripts of Ballmer's remarks will soon notice that such a conclusion would be plain wrong.
The relevant section is pasted below for your enlightenment, but in summary, Ballmer is pointing out that growth markets are mainly in the consumer and emerging markets. Enterprises after all already have volume contracts that entitle them to any new software release.
Selling more consumer systems will cause a drop in the average revenue per system because those software packages are priced cheaper than enterprise ones. Ballmer also cautioned that there will be just a limited spike from "high piracy markets as a result of Vista's new piracy protection technologies. But many piracy users in emerging economies couldn't afford to pay for Vista anyway.
Ballmer didn't dim Vista's overall market expectations, but he issued analysts a dose of realism.
I've looked at some of the models and reports, et cetera, about our business and what people think it looks like, and I'm really excited on how enthusiastic everybody is about Vista. I, too, am very enthusiastic about Vista. But I think sometimes the enthusiasm about this great product and the excitement and the launch, people have to understand our revenue models because I think some of the revenue forecasts I've seen out there for Windows Vista in fiscal year '08 are overly aggressive, if I could say it that way, and let me kind of walk through what drives Windows revenue so people understand why I say what I'm saying.
PC growth is a driver of Windows revenue. You all have your own forecasts for PC growth. I will tell you that whatever you think it is, more growth comes from high piracy markets than from low piracy markets. That's an important thing to remember. And more of the growth tends to come from the consumer market these days than the business market, which means we also receive as a mix lower average price. We have a lower average price typically on Windows in the consumer world than we do for the business world.
Piracy reduction can be a source of Windows revenue growth, and I think we'll make some piracy improvements this year. We have new technologies built into Windows Vista, something we call Windows Genuine Advantage we've really dialed up in capabilities with the Vista release, and I do think that that will bring some revenue growth. I still don't count on it to be a huge thing on the scale of this business as we really ferret through how far we can dial it up, and what that means for customer experience and customer satisfaction.
We will have strong growth in the Windows business in emerging markets: China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others. But that's strong growth on quite a low base of revenue. Those markets are very high piracy. In some cases we also have much lower pricing in some of those markets with our Starter Edition, et cetera.
Corporate upgrades, people say, ah, corporate upgrades, that's the place to go. We already sold a lot of Vista corporate upgrades. That's built into a lot of our Enterprise Agreements that have previously been signed. And I think some people may be a little bit more bullish. I think we can drive these harder. I think there is some upside. But I think people might underestimate the degree to which we already have a very strong base of Enterprise Agreement bookings for essentially -- that essentially include Windows Vista.
And last but not least is non-corporate upgrades where, if anything, I think you have to think FY '08 might be slightly down versus FY '07, because we have such a large surge that we're getting post the Vista launch in these non-corporate upgrades. This is people walking into retail stores typically buying a retail copy of Vista to upgrade to. We get huge spikes in the first month, two months, three months, which all occur in fiscal year '07, and will not recur in fiscal year '08.
So, I think as I've looked at what many of you have to say about it, I think this is an area where perhaps people are somewhat too bullish.
There are two other areas that I think are worth mentioning. Online customer acquisition: I said this last year at the meeting; I'll say it again this year. We continue to explore interesting ways to actually increase our operating expense against online customer acquisition. We've pursued a number of those. Some have been successful and are in the statement I'm making about 2.7 billion or less of operating expense growth, but we continue to look for effective, cost-effective ways to increase customer acquisition. And while there's a lot of this funded, we may come back to you some time in the year and tell you that we will increase it.
February 17, 2007 at 01:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
HP denies any rumours about HP-UX pending demise
HP has unveiled an update to its HP-UX operating system. It vowed that it will continue to issue updates for many years to come, killing any rumors that competitors are spreading about its allegedly pending demise.
The software still runs a fair amount of the world's mission critical computer systems. HP developers have extensively tweaked the new 11i v3 version to boost its performance.
You won't hear us utter a single bad word about HP-UX. The software for years has done a splendid job at running really boring yet important applications. These are systems that companies typically won't touch until flames are bursting out of them.
But the company at a launch event earlier this week in San Francisco pushed its luck when it tried to pitch the software against Sun's Solaris operating system. The "we're not Linux, but open source just the same" Solaris software has found a strong following with companies that install it on industry standard x86 servers (many of which come from HP).
HP-UX doesn't even support x86 servers – it's limited to PA-RISC (which has been all but discontinued) and Itanium processors.
HP-UX is to software what mainframes are to the server market: really important its installed base, and utterly irrelevant to the rest of the world.
HP's superdome, as exciting as an IBM mainframe and not nearly selling as well.
February 17, 2007 at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Mobile porn turned into pariah
The big boys are picking on mobile porn. Even though operators and providers are making a tidy penny from erotic, premium text message chats and expect a booming market for short video clip downloads, mobile providers don't want to be seen close to any of the providers.
Porn still is a dirty secret that just happens to rake in billions, but can be brought to a standstill by morally outraged Catholic archbishops that represent a church that can't prevent its priests from sodomizing little children.
The Canadian archbishop Raymond Roussin earlier this week lashed out against Telus for launching a mobile porn service:
"Given the increasing awareness of addiction to pornography through internet access, and the abuse that this perpetuates of vulnerable persons, the decision by Telus is disappointing and disturbing," Roussin told the British Columbia Catholic newspaper.
February 16, 2007 at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack
Viacom embraces video embedding, but without Youtube
Viacom doesn’t need Youtube to advertise its Comedy Central and MTV clips anymore. In a rare case of old media vision, the firm is now allowing bloggers to embed clips from its shows on their own websites.
Consumers so far have manually posted clips from several Viacom shows on Youtube, where they attracted a loyal following. The phenomenon however raises obvious copyright concerns, prompting youtube to remove about 100,000 Viacom clips earlier this month.
Viacom's example hopefully will be followed by many others, enabling a legal and viral market for online videos.
If that happens, the question that begs for an answer becomes: what is Youtube's role and benefit? Currently the video service is the biggest because its the biggest: publishers like Youtube's massive audience and the audience likes the massive amount of videos.
As publishers choose to host video on their own servers, Youtube will lose its role as the world's video aggregators. Soon it will go the same way as Geocities and Xoom, services that offered easy to use tools that allowed consumers to build and host their own websites in 1999, and now are nowhere to be seen.
The world doesn't need a $1.65bn video hosting service. It needs a video search engine that connects consumers and content.
February 15, 2007 at 03:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
SCO spokesperson tired of talking about legal case, leaves
SCO's legal battle against Linux has taken another victim. SCO spokesperson Blake Stowell (pictured below) has left the company and is moving to Omniture.
View this photo
In a candid moment, Stowell explained the prolonged legal battle forced him out.
"…the role of PR for me at SCO has run its course. With the company's ongoing litigation, I was much more limited in what I could do from a PR standpoint," Stowell told the Daily Herald.
"Frequently, when I have to make a statement to the media about developments with regard to the progress of our litigation or a certain direction the company was going, I couldn't for legal reasons."
The Linux lawsuit has caused many SCO customers to abandon the company's Unix operating system in protest, causing a drop in the firm's revenues. SCO employees furthermore have become the pariahs among their peers.
No matter how much SCO tries to keep the legal case separated
from its everyday operations, Stowell's comments underscore that this
is just wishful thinking.
In 2005 we attended SCO Forum in Las Vegas, where we had back to back interviews with SCO chief executive Darl McBride and the general manager of SCO's Unix division Jeff Hunsaker. While we mostly discussed the Linux suit in the first interview, the second one focused on SCO's Unix product.
At the end of the Hunsaker interview, McBride walked into our room. Unware of the topics that we discussed, he asked Hunsaker:
"Did he ask you what it is like to work for the devil?"
February 14, 2007 at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
3G still looking for a lasting date with its killer app
The best thing about my Edge (2.8G) mobile phone is its Bluetooth connection. The wireless connection enables the mobile to function as a modem for the notebook computer, making true on the promise of continuous connectivity and saving me the hassle of buying day passes to Wi-Fi services when traveling.
That's alarming to the mobile industry. This week at 3GSM, it finally admitted that consumers still aren't warming up to 3G services. Text messaging (SMS) became a success by accident. But the industry then killed the goose with the golden eggs by overcharging for MMS, preventing it to take off.
Are they doing the same for other 3G services? My provider charges a $20 monthly fee for unlimited access to mobile email news headlines in the mobile browser. But the real bargain lays in the fact that high speed data subscription with network card would go for much more.
The provider doesn't know that I'm using a smart phone – for all they know I'm still on a stone-age handset. If they did, they would instantly raise the subscription fees. The rate for an unlimited data plan on a smart phone jumps to $40 – there $20 suddenly buys me no more than a measly 5Mb per month.
If operators are scratching they heads about the limited adoption of high speed data services, they should take a closer look at their pricing structures. The average consumer isn't going to enjoy mobile data services at $40 per month, just because Vodafona or AT&T feels that it needs to further increase its profit margins.
Operator greed killed the promise of MMS. Will they repeat their mistakes for 3G?
Apple's iPhone too risks becoming a victim of operator greed
February 14, 2007 at 08:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Man wants hobby
ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons has found his second calling in life with music, the first always seems to have been hot rods and custom cars.
Any guy that wakes up one morning and comes up with the idea to turn a classic Volkswagen van into some ball shaped structure should receive some kind of price.
While it doesn't seem to be doing anything, it comes with nearly all the necessary parts, including steering wheel and windshield wipers. (No word on an engine and wheels however).
February 14, 2007 at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Google bits the dust in Belgian court case
Google was defeated for the second time in a Belgium court room. A judge sided with a series of local newspapers that claimed that the search engine violated their copyrights.
Google only copies snippets of text from their websites, which begs the question if it still qualifies as a copyright violation. But a far more important issue is: what do these newspapers hope to gain from being excluded from Google's search results?
This blog is part of the vnunet websites. We work with Google, allowing web searchers to easily find the information that they are looking for. They submit information to Google Base and use tags and robots.txt files to help the search engine navigate our websites.
This site's parent company is fully aware that Google copies information from the website to its cache. And we don't mind if Google news copies our copyrighted headlines in the Google News service.
Because as Google helps users find their way around the way, they find our pages more often, giving our advertisers the opportunity to target entice them with their offerings, helping us, Google, and the advertisers make more money.
Allowing Google to link to our headlines is a small price to pay. Especially if you consider the fact that the benefits translate into real money, where the disadvantage is merely a theoretical loss of control over our headlines. A no-brainer, except in Belgium.
February 13, 2007 at 11:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Vista's security seal gets broken
Microsoft has issued the first security update for its shiny, new Vista operating system.
The questionable honour goes to the Malware Protection Engine, which powers the Vista versions of Onecare and Windows Defender.
We could dive into an hour long debate about the question if this qualifies as an actual Vista bug (and believe me, we did). The component after all might be an exclusive Vista tool, but isn't a core part of the operating system. But Microsoft gave the final word: because the vulnerability causes Vista to be flawed, the update is considered a Vista update, a company spokesperson told vnunet.com.
So there we have it. The most secure version of Windows suffered from a critical security hole. It was bound to happen. But it would have been nice for Microsoft if it wouldn't have happened on the first patch release cycle after the official launch.
Onecare for Vista (click to enlarge - picture of beta software)
February 13, 2007 at 11:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Microsoft's next stop: 2009
Windows Vista might offer Windows' foundation for the next decade, Microsoft still plans on selling us regular updates.
The next stop on the Microsoft money train is scheduled for 2009, corporate vice president of development Ben Fathi said last week at the RSA Conference.
Microsoft doesn't want to talk about Vista just yet – the company is still revelling in the echos of the Vista launch party. So Windows Client Director Kevin Kurtz today was quick to issue at statement proclaiming that Microsoft has nothing to say about the next Windows.
A next Windows will come no doubt, and people will buy it. But the most interesting question is if Microsoft by 2009 will be ready to truly and genuinely embrace the internet, or if Windows by then will have been reduced to a basic operating layer that provides access to Google's and Yahoo's online applications.
Lets see some vision before we start looking at features.
Yearning for a new vista already?
February 13, 2007 at 01:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Mac TV ads: the empire strikes back
Apple has pretty much opened the flood gates on picking on stereo types in its television ads for the its PCs.
So when Mac fans watch some the responses that Laurie McGuinness prepared, they should prepared for a hard core soul trampling.
Money: Mac may be cool but PC has the money.
Girl: PC gets the girl.
Work: Mac works for PC.
Music: Mac doesn't like to share.
February 13, 2007 at 01:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Did you want some floating point with your 80-core CPU
Intel today showed off a first working test model of its 80-core processor.
But don't get excited. Even the most avid gamer won't be able to put this behemoth to any good use. Instead software developers need to come up with applications that require a massive amount of instructions to be executed (aka: threads).
Unless you're planning to run the web server for Google or Digg.com from under your living room sofa, you'd have to start looking at image analysis to get any use for your terraflop system. Because we're just dying to search for that one photo of auntie Margie in front of the pyramids (search for triangels), or the single pic of uncle Bob smiling (search for smiles).
At least, that was one of the benefits that Intel researchers are touting about the chip.
A minor issue is that Intel last year already showed off an application that does image retrieval... running on a current generation notebook computer. You can check it out on the video below.
Time to head back to the drawing board?
February 13, 2007 at 12:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
iTunes on Vista from the trenches
When Apple warned users not to upgrade to Vista under the threat of iPod and
iTunes catastrophe, we waved it off as the usual
But this time it turned out that Apple wasn't kidding. Hooking an
iPod up to a Windows
Vista machine really is the sort of experience that causes you to wake up sweating in the middle of the night screaming "error -53!"
Making changes to your iPod settings requires that the "enable disk use" option is selected. But iTunes won't allow you to make any changes to the iPod settings when its running in Vista. Instead the system would become unresponsive for 45 seconds, followed by a cryptic error message.
The problem here is that Apple has pumped out so many wild exaggerations and anti-Windows FUD, that we can't tell the genuine Microsoft bashing from the Steve-Jobs-gone-made Microsoft bashing.
Regardless, in this case, Apple's not kidding. No FUD this time, just a
good headache. If you have an iPod, don't take it anywhere near
They really mean it this time.
Don't do it - yet
February 12, 2007 at 10:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Irish update Wikipedia on their football skills
Football (soccer) hooliganism is spreading to the internet.
The national squad of Ireland earlier this showed an embarrassing performance against San Marino, a tiny mountain state with a population of 28,117. The team had to rely on an injury-time goal to pull out a victory.
Ireland is disgusted. The Irish Sun headlined: "Minnows 1, Muppets 2". The Irish Times summarized the match by saying: "Staunton finds new level of ineptitude."
The world of user generated content turned their frustration to Wikipedia. For hours on Thursday, an entry about the The Football League of Ireland read: (caution: profanities included)
The '''Football Association of Ireland''' ('''FAI''')Are a bunch of useless cunts that should be taken out and shot. Everything that they touch turns to ash. wheither it's the Eircom League, all the money that they blew after the 1990 & 1994 world Cups, the Building of Eircom Park, The Roy keane incident, The Sacking Of Brian Kerr after he did the best that he could right down to the Appiontment of a man without no managerial experience and who talks through his arse...Mr Steve Staunton! the organising body for the sport of [[Football (soccer)|association football]] (soccer) in the [[Republic of Ireland]]They should appoint Dave Barry 'cause he is from Cork and knows all about winning. Doucha Davey Barry boy!. It should not be confused with the [[Irish Football Association]] (IFA), which is the organising body for the sport in [[Northern Ireland]] which is full of dirty fuckin huns and snakes just like Rangers.
Editing the entry is currently block due to an overly colored level or accuracy.
San Marino: picture perfect, but not for the Irish
February 9, 2007 at 07:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Hotmail renamed Hotmail
Microsoft won't get fancy with the naming of its Hotmail email service.
The company originally intended to drop the "Hot" in the name (making for Windows Live Mail), but will now settle on Windows Live Hotmail.
The firm on a company blog explained that the decision was based on user feedback. But it also signals a more realistic attitude towards Microsoft's overall online strategy.
When Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie first unveiled Windows Live in November 2005, the service was presented as a full fledged assault on the online advertising market.
Microsoft has since received a severe humbling as its "revolutionary" Live search engine failed to steal any market share from Google. The latter also unveiled betas of services that will be able to rival many of Microsoft's upcoming services.
Convincing existing Hotmail users to start using additional Microsoft services sounds like a more sensible strategy that competing with Google head on.
February 8, 2007 at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
CA's RSA mystery
Computer Associates made an honorable attempt at delivering a visionary keynote at the RSA Conference, but stumbled before it crossed the finish line.
The company's chief executive John Swainson promised that he would enlighten his audience on the difference between security puzzles and mysteries.
A puzzle can be solved provided you have all the information. A mystery doesn’t have a solution, it merely confuses the people breaking their heads over it.
Security so far has been mostly treated as a puzzle, with anti virus, anti spyware and access management as the solutions.
The mystery of security however is how to build a service that is intuitive and easy to use. If we follow Swainson's reasoning, that is a journey without a destination.
"Our greatest challenge comes at the intersection of technology and human psychology—the grand mystery of security: how to make it all work together seamlessly. How to ensure that once the human elements are introduced everything still works as it should."
Insert comment about open door here.
Swainson deserves credit for delivering a keynote that isn't an obvious company product pitch, or worse, pull an Oracle. But the company failed to deliver a visionary speech. Instead Swainson left behind a puzzled audience.
February 8, 2007 at 02:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Larry Ellison a now-show at RSA Security
Larry Ellison has bailed out of his keynote at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco. The company instead sent a lieutenant, Hasan Rizvi, vice president of Identity Management and security products.
Rizvi claimed that Ellison unable to attend because was struck by a flu virus. The company didn't bother disclosing his absence ahead of his non-appearance. Rizvi simply entered the stage and said: "As you all see, I am not Larry Ellison".
Attendees at the show voted with their feet. Throughout Rizvi's presentation, a steady stream of delegates made their way for the exit (you can see what was left after 15 mins on the right).
We can't help but speculate that there is a deeper meaning behind Elison's absence. The company in past months has come under fire for the horrible security record of its database. Security experts grade it as one of the worst in the industry.
Ellison is known to allow some time for questions at the end of his presentations, and several delegates that we spoke with were looking forward to challenging the vendor's state of security denial.
But what did Oracle talk about? Rizvi in about 20 minutes rushed through a presentation where he showed off the company's enterprise search and briefly mentioned that is has identity services too.
There can't be any better way to bore an audience of cryptographers and bug hunters to dead.
Ellison actually pulled the same prank one year ago, when the company staged a cheer fest about its 2008 Project Fusion. Ellison was scheduled to close the event, but he never showed up (again claiming to have caught a flu virus). He sent his president Charles Philips instead. Then too the company failed to mention Ellison's absence until the very last minute.
Oracle's last keynote presentation at Linuxworld comes to mind as well. Charles Philips there too rushed through his 45 minute time slot, didn't address anything relevant to the audience and left behind a puzzled crowd.
Rizvi: "As you all see, I am not Larry Ellison."
February 7, 2007 at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
How do you secure your network if you don't know what's on it? (Video)
About 25 per cent of the world's IT organizations doesn't know what systems are on their network, Symantec found in its first IT Risk Management Report.
Not knowing can mean anything from knowing which servers are running on a network, to being oblivious on the version or patch level of operating systems. In the video below, the reports author Jeremy Ward discusses which trends surface in the report.
February 7, 2007 at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Symantec doesn't want to travel the road alone (Video)
Should you trust Microsoft to sell you anti virus, firewall and anti spyware technology that protects users against flaws in its own operating system?
Symantec's chief executive John Thompson at the RSA Conference this week said that he believes that you shouldn't. In fact, he claims, it's a huge conflict of interest. He then goes on to compare the dilemma to that of a book keeper auditing his own books, which is as relevant as a pink elephant parading over the Golden Gate Bridge.
But Thompson does have a point in arguing that no single company can provide a security resolution. Partnerships are inevitable and required.
Below you can watch a video from Thompson's RSA Security keynote.
February 7, 2007 at 07:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Bill Gates shows the end of security as we know it (Video)
Security hasn't been about defending just the perimeter for some time, but Microsoft now sees the stars lining up behind this trend.
At the RSA Conference in San Francisco today, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and the company's chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie explained how emerging networking standards and other new technologies will deliver a higher level of security.
System access should be provided on an application basis rather than a system basis, they explained.
A video from Microsoft's keynote presentation is available below.
February 7, 2007 at 02:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Get your own phishing operation for $3,000
In a recent phishing attack against customers of the Nordea Bank, thieves netted about $1.1m.
About 250 clients were fooled by a phishing email that was portrayed to be sent by the bank and promised a free anti spyware applications. The download instead proved to be a password stealing application.
The attackers paid a mere $3,000 to stage the attack (see picture on the left). At least, that's what they paid for a professional malware authoring tool that allows anybody to build a custom virus. And then we're still talking about the high end version – malware tools start at a few hundred bucks, Dmitri Alperovitch (pictured below), a Principal Research Scientist with Secure Computing, said during a session at the RSA Conference.
If you're a clever online thief however, you don't pillage the online
bank accounts and credit cards yourself. That merely increases the
risks of getting caught. The real pros sell the login information
online. The average credit card will net you a between $7 and $15. A
gold card with a high credit limit of $22,000 gets you about $40. (pictured right: asking prices for a series of credit cards with varying limits)
But let's say you're desperate for some cash. The clever crooks recruit some gullible consumers to work from home transferring money through their personal bank accounts. The "employees" never realize that they are laundering funds until it's too late.
A more risky way is to set up a fake online store and use the stolen credit cards to purchase goods.
If you happen to have the credit card owner's social security number,
you can also change the billing address on the credit card, go on an
online shopping spree and have the goods delivered at the address of a
middleman (or again, someone who fell for a "work from home doing
nothing" ad.
And the less sophisticated create a fake plastic card, including magnetic strip, to go on a real world shopping spree.
Laundering money isn't as easy as it seems, and will likely cost some money. But if you just netted $1.1m, you can justify some costs.
Management console for the Visual Brix hacking tool (click picture to enlarge)
February 7, 2007 at 02:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Windows OneCare flunks anti-virus exam
Windows OneCare on Vista had been found unable to stop 100 per cent of the currently documented security threats.
In a test by Virus Bulletin, Microsoft's security service failed to detect several dozens of malware examples that were let loose on a collection of 15 anti virus products for Windows Vista.
Microsoft joined three other vendors in the failure category, including McAfee.
The results bode badly for consumers. Despite Vista's advertised bullet proof security, users of the software can't trust that they are safe and secure.
February 6, 2007 at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Waiting for the big Youtube suit
What is keeping copyright owners from filing a legal ca