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Zango caught cheating on FTC settlement – again

Zango just can't seem to leave it criminal days behind. Spyware researcher Ben Edelman today published evidence that shows that the company is still engaging in deceptive installations of its adware application.

Users who are lured in by Zango's promise of "free" games, videos and other premium content still don't get proper disclosures about the pop up advertisements that they will have to put up with.

Zango claims that Edelman is "dead wrong", stating that he used outdated copies of the Zango software that will no longer function. The company also accuses the researcher of manipulating his research by running his tests on an "archaic computer with low or outdated screen resolution".

The discussion all goes back to a legal settlement last October, when Zango agreed with the FTC to stop questionable installations of its adware application.

The adware maker at the time sent out a boastful press release in which it claimed that it was already in compliance with the new rules. It took spyware researcher Ben Edelman only a few weeks to collect evidence that nothing was further from the truth, and today he claims that is still the case.

Edelman (pictured right) and Zango may have a history together, but you have to at least assume that the researcher has a point. If anything, Zango is the convicted party here, and the company has a track record of bad boy behavior that goes well beyond the FTC settlement.

Zango furthermore keeps playing the "customer choice" card, mentioning the millions of users of its software.

But if its software is so intensely popular, the firm would have no problem giving up its affiliate programmes that caused all its problems. For Zango always has argued that it were unscrupulous distributors who caused illegal installations of its software. It has cut of dozens of these botnet herders and greedy website operators, but you can't weed out crime altogether.

If drug addicts cause trouble, you ban drug. If distributors cause trouble, you stop providing your products to distributors. According to Zango, users are finding its software insanely useful. Then why rely on a network of malware traffickers and underground types to distribute the software?

• A video demonstration of botnet instaling multiple adware applications is available on the Security Watchdog blog.

July 31, 2007 at 11:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Microsoft: listen to our sales rep, he knows best!

Microsoft in recent weeks has been under fire for its Software Assurance program. As both Forrester and Garnter have found, enterprises don't see the value in the programme. A survey by Forrester found that 26 per cent of the enterprises is preparing to drop it for sure and only 11 per cent said that they "definitely renew" the programme.

Responding to the criticism, Microsoft's corporate vice president of worldwide licensing and pricing Joe Matz (pictured right) argued that customers would be better off if they just listened to Microsoft's sales department instead:

But we also recommend that customers rely on their Microsoft representative and local Microsoft Certified Partner for ongoing, direct and accurate information. These are the people on the ground who are able to assess an individual customer’s business situation — their existing systems, their people, their budget, their business and technology needs — and crunch the real numbers while also making sure the customer gets on the right type of volume licensing agreement.

The number crunching that Matz is referring shouldn't be confused with the saleperson's quarterly sales target. Or the company's efforts to kickstart its flat stock price by growing revenues and profits.

We couldn't agree more with the paragraph preceding Matz' praise for Microsoft's internal sales force.

"Like any other third-party source, analysts draw their own conclusions about Microsoft’s programs — which they should. The market is better off with this additional perspective and feedback that they bring.

So what is it, Mr. Matz? Should I trust analyst firms that are paid to provide independent research? Or should I trust your sales people who are paid to sell as many boxes as possible?

July 31, 2007 at 01:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Comment spam made easy

If you thought that forced registration and Captcha human verification technologies solved the bulletin board spam challenge, you were wrong.

Security vendor Panda on its blog is demonstrating an application that will leave 1,500 spam comments on bulletin board in 15 minutes.

Xrumer slices through captcha verification and forced registrations – all are designed to verify that the poster is a human being rather than a spamming computer.

The $450 application offers an amazingly simple user interface. In a few clicks, the spammer creates a new email address with a free provider, sets up keywords for bulletin boards that he/she wants to target and creates the actual spam message. Xrumer takes care of all the rest: it will decipher the captha codes. If registration is required, it will await the confirmation emails 'click' the activation link and post the spam.

Xrumer only targets bulletin boards running common scripting languages such as PHP, most likely because they are easy to find. But it will only be a short stretch to imagine a similar technology getting unleashed towards blogs, and we're in comment spam hell all over again.

• No link provided to Xrumer's website - as a policy we don't link to potentially harmful applications.

July 30, 2007 at 10:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack

Tom Siebel finds a new career as legal reformer

Having stopped just short of the top with Siebel Systems, the company's founder and former CEO Tom Siebel (pictured) is now taking a shot a legal reform.

Earlier this month, the California Supreme Court granted Tom Siebel the right to sue the lawyers from a past case against the billionaire. In July 2000 Siebel settle a suit from a disgruntled employee.

Cases like these are commonly settled to save the legal expenses and a potentially large monetary judgement and to prevent the case from distracting from everyday business. The terms of the settlement typically include a clause in which all parties waive the right to pursue any further claims.

In additional to claiming that the case was frivolous, Siebel charged that he should still be able to pursue legally the opposing lawyers – and the court agreed. Carol Middlestadt, currently a judge in San Mateo County, and Richard Buell violated ethical and legal rules in bringing the case to court, claims Siebel.

"This is a private effort at tort reform," Siebel said in a press release. "This ruling will make lawyers think twice before seeking to extort settlements from vulnerable targets by filing lawsuits they know are frivolous. Victims of frivolous litigation will now find it easier to have their day in court, bypassing what could potentially be years in the costly appeals process."

Siebel Systems pioneered customer relationship management (CRM) space after Oracle CEO Larry Ellison dismissed the idea. After a brief period of success, the company found out that there was limited demand for a stand alone CRM product. The market instead moved to suites of integrated CRM, ERP and other enterprise applications. Oracle scooped up Siebel Systems for $5.85bn in 2005.

Once hailed as a business pundit, Tom Siebel was then quickly exposed for allowing a bloated cost structure that contributed to the company running into the ground. Oracle had to manoeuvre its way out of expensive real estate leases and Siebel seem to have retreated to his estate in the millionaire's town of Woodsite in Silicon Valley (Larry Ellison lives around the block).

Salesforce.com is campaigning outside Siebel System's corporate headquarters, shortly after the acquisition by Oracle

July 28, 2007 at 01:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBack

Intel gets cornered in

At a press conference following yesterday's AMD Technology Analyst Day, the chipmaker's executive vice president of sales and marketing Henri Richard (pictured) further bemoaned Intel's atrocities.

Later that day, the European Union filed anti trust charges against Intel, adding to the firm's legal headache.

AMD alleges that Lenovo and German retail chain Media Markt are shunning AMD because Intel is essentially paying them to do so. It's for the same reason, Richard suggested, that Dell would only last year start shipping AMD desktops and servers, not because the computer maker was clueless about its customers.

Intel had the computer industry in a choke hold, charged Richard. By withholding chip shipments, it could effectively cripple their businesses. The company also held its partners on a short leash by paying out discounts only at the end of the quarter and when vendors had met certain targets. Without the discount, profits were nearly impossible.

AMD however isn't as defenceless a victim as it claims to be. When confronted by the its slipping market share in the server space, Richard countered that Intel's lead would quickly dissolve one AMD shipped its own quad core processor. He then pointed to AMD's commanding market share lead in the four-way server space (systems with four CPUs).

That isn't a big surprise however, considering the fact that Intel doesn't offer any processors for the 4-way segment. And the sweet point is still in the the 2-way market.

July 28, 2007 at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack

VMWare's $9.4bn success

Cisco today joined Intel in buying a stake in virtualization vendor VMWare. The networking giant paid $150m for 1.6 per cent of VMWare's stock.

Intel earlier this month shelled out $218.5m for a 2.5 per cent stake in the company. The chipmaker got a better deal, paying $87.4m per percentage point relative to Cisco's $93.75m per percentage point.

The Cisco deal values VMWare at $9.4bn. That for a company that logged $703.9m in sales last year.

The real winner here is EMC, which paid $635m to acquire VMWare in 2003 at about three time its annual sales. The firm is now selling off a 10 per cent stake in the company on the stock market and directly to industry partners, while maintaining a firm hold on its strategic direction.

July 27, 2007 at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

AMD welcomes the end of Intel's advertising monopoly

AMD claims to be seeing a new result of the end of the clock speed wars, as computer manufacturers have dropped processor branding in their advertisements.

Intel in the past has spent millions of dollars to pay for advertisements by PC makers including HP, Acer and Dell, knowing that consumers would ultimately purchase Intel chips.

But at the AMD analyst day at the company's Silicon Valley headquarters, the chip maker pointed out that an increasing number of advertisements has dropped the vendor branding.

AMD's executive vice president of sales and marketing Henri Richard (pictured) went as far as to claim the end of the "monopoly tax", an obvious jab at Intel.

But to those who don't run around paranoid seeking expansive conspiracies, is could also indicate the advent of the computer as a consumer appliance that goes beyond spreadsheets and raw performance. It doesn't matter what's under the hood, looks matter.

July 26, 2007 at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBack

John Chambers deflates rumours on political aspirations

Cisco chief executive reignited speculations about potential political aspirations recently when he joined John McCain's bid for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination as a technology advisor.

The networking chief has been linked to a political career before, mostly because he is a gifted speaker and has build an impressive network among government leaders as well as business executives.

But his (personal) endorsement of McCain (who is trailing in the polls behind Rudi Giuliani) doesn't signal a planned relocation to Washington. Instead, Chambers said in an interview, he is using his political activism to motivate his employees to do the same.

Add the opportunity to lobby for patent reform and other legislation, and you understand why Chambers is happy to rub shoulders with politicians.

See what Chambers has to say on the topic on vnunet.com/tv.

July 25, 2007 at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack

Cisco claims Web2.0 as corporate property

Web2.0 isn't about blogging, podcasting and other forms of information sharing. It's about collaboration, Cisco CEO John Chambers claimed at the Networkers conference in Anaheim, CA.

Speaking to a crowd of more than 10,000 networking professionals, Chambers projected that his web 2.0 will cause a second wave of internet productivity gains that will dwarf those of the late 90s.

Cisco's Web2.0 may have nothing to do with Web2.0 as the rest of the world knows it. Maybe that's why the networking giant is calling the plumbing that will enable its Web2.0 as Data Center 3.0.

Although the name is just as confusing, Data Center 3.0 refers to the era of virtualization. And particularly an era in which systems will automatically assign additional resources when a website is hit with heavy traffic, or to an application that is running a weekly data analysis.

Where middlware vendors such as BEA and IBM are looking to solve this problem through software, Cisco is looking at the network - obviously because that's where its it has its expertise. Each approach has its pros and cons, but nobody should be surprised that multiple vendors are offering multiple ways to reach the enterprise data center nirvana.

July 25, 2007 at 01:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack

Microsoft makes sure to set low Windows expectations

Borrowing a page from the book of Apple, Microsoft has yanked a list of user requested features for the next Windows from the Channel 9 web site.

The company provided PC World with a canned statement: "we are not giving official guidance to the public yet about the next version of Windows."

As I can personally testify, the software vendor pulls out this quote from Windows director Kevin Kutz every time a reporter asks about the next Windows version, or even about Windows Vista Service Pack 1. Microsoft PR often can be like a pull string doll: every time you pull the string, the same words will come out.

Microsoft has allegedly hidden Windows development plans behind a veil of secrecy. Perhaps the firm thinks that it can build more excitement about new product if the features stay more of a surprise. Or perhaps the firm is attempting to prevent any more embarrassing headlines when it pulls previously promised features: you can't delay what you haven't announced.

If Apple can turn its development plants into a Fort Knox to prevent information leaks, Microsoft should be able to follow suit. But hard- and software developers rely on this information to build their future product. Apple gets away with its tight-lippedness  because it controls its own hardware. But outside OEMs and peripheral makers are the main source of Microsoft's success.

Besides, the published list merely provided an overview of features that users would like to see. In no way does if reflect the feature that Microsoft is looking to implement.

July 17, 2007 at 12:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack