Google: DRAM error rates vastly higher than previously thought

A study released this week by Google Inc. and the University of Toronto showed that data error rates on DRAM memory modules are vastly higher than previously thought and may be more responsible for system shutdowns and service interruptions. About a third of all machines in the fleet experience at least one memory error per year, and the average number of correctable errors per year is over 22,000," the report states. "These numbers vary across platforms, with some platforms seeing nearly 50% of their machines affected by correctable errors, while in others only 12%-27% are affected." The median number of errors per year on a Google server that had at least one error ranged from 25 to 611. A memory error is marked by bits being read differently from how they were originally written. The study ( download .pdf ), which used tens of thousands of Google's servers, showed that about 8.2% of all dual in-line memory modules (DIMM) are affected by correctable errors and that an average DIMM experiences about 3,700 correctable errors per year. "Our first observation is that memory errors are not rare events.

Memory errors can be caused by electrical or magnetic interference or by hardware corruption. Soft errors are often caused by radiation or alpha particles, which naturally occur in organic materials, including the epoxy that DRAM chips come packed in. Memory errors are classified as soft errors, which randomly corrupt bits but do not leave physical damage and can be corrected, and hard errors, which corrupt bits (cells) within the DRAM that become a physical defect that repeats data errors. Hard errors are most often caused by chip contamination at the manufacturing facility, but they often don't show up in testing and only surface after the memory chip warms after hours of use, according to Jim Handy, an analyst with Objective Analysis in Los Gatos, Calif. ECC on special chips is used to detect and correct errors introduced during data storage or transmission. The Google/University of Toronto study included memory from multiple vendors as well as multiple types of DRAM (dynamic random access memory), such as DDR1, DDR2 and FB-DIMM. The study covered the majority of servers in Google's data centers and was conducted over two-and-a-half years, from January 2006 to June 2008. While the study focused on servers and stated that error rates are not climbing with the latest, more dense generations of DRAM, the results show that PCs will eventually need error correction codes (ECC) technology as the size of memory chips become more and more dense, Handy said.

Today, DRAM uses 50 nanometer lithography technology but is migrating to 40 nanometer technology. For example, while a server with error correction technology can continue to function after a soft error, a PC would need to be rebooted. The smaller the bits, the more susceptible they are to soft errors due to normal levels of radiation, Handy said. A hard error would also be corrected each time a processor attempted to read from a bit on a server card, but the DRAM in a PC, because it has no error correction, would need to be replaced because it would cause a system or application using the memory to crash, Handy said. "The study shows hard errors are more common than soft. Handy said such problems often result in system downtime and service outages.

That means modules are running and running and running in servers and every time a hard error bit is encountered, it's corrected so the memory module never gets replaced," Handy said. "If that happened to a PC user, the machine would stop working." If an error is uncorrectable, as in the case of multiple bits exceeding the limit of what the ECC can correct, a server will shut down. "In many production environments, including ours, a single uncorrectable error is considered serious enough to replace the dual in-line memory module that caused it," the Google report read. The study states that memory errors are expensive in terms of the system failures they cause and the repair costs associated with them. They can also open the door to security problems. "In production sites running large-scale systems, memory component replacements rank near the top of component replacements and memory errors are one of the most common hardware problems to lead to machine crashes," the report stated. "Moreover, recent work shows that memory errors can cause security vulnerabilities."

Compuware to acquire Gomez for $295 million

Compuware today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Web application performance management vendor Gomez for $295 million.  Hottest tech M&A deals of 2009 The deal, expected to close in November, will augment Compuware's IT management software suite with Gomez's technology, which is designed to monitor and manage Web site and Web application performance. Executives from both companies point to complementary products and existing product integrations as a driver for the pending acquisition. "Together, Compuware and Gomez provide the industry's only unified application performance management solution, spanning the enterprise and Internet," said Compuware President and COO Bob Paul, in a press release. "For business and IT executives who are moving more business-critical applications onto the Internet, Compuware can now offer unified visibility, isolation and resolution of application performance problems from the data center to the customer. Gomez's 272 worldwide employees and management team, headquartered in Lexington, Mass., are expected to join Compuware, which is based in Detroit, after the close of the transaction. Competitive offerings only cover isolated portions of the enterprise-Internet application delivery chain." Gomez executives say the deal will ultimately benefit the vendor's existing customers. "This agreement marks a fundamental breakthrough in how IT and business leaders can manage the performance of all the applications that drive their businesses," said Jaime Ellertson, Gomez CEO and president, in a statement. "The complementary nature of our products and our already-existing product integration will allow Compuware and Gomez to rapidly deliver dramatically extended value to our mutual customers." Compuware will be able to add Gomez's software-as-a-service business model to its own growing SaaS revenue, and Gomez will benefit from Compuware's research and development group, larger sales organization and geographic reach, company executives say.

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Internet battlefield program marshals NATO forces

Getting military forces from different nations to work together in Afghanistan is no easy task, but before multinational troops with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization arrive there, officers and others are often trained through an online Battle Labs computer simulation via the Internet. The realistic interactive computer simulation, which can even create avatars of personnel, helps bring together hundreds of NATO staff who work in Afghanistan under the command of U.S. Gen. The advanced online computer-simulation training, supported on a secure network hubbed through a classified link in Poland, gives participants a way to train in their own country before they arrive on the ground in Afghanistan.

Stanley McChrystal, says Rear Admiral Christian Canova, the French Navy officer who is deputy assistant chief of staff for future capabilities, research and technology at the NATO headquarters Allied Command Transformation. Canova, who works with a dozen experts in various areas of research and technology to plan for future capabilities in NATO, thinks this era in some ways is proving more difficult than the long Cold War era, when NATO served mainly as a bulwark against Soviet Union expansionism. "The Cold War threat was stable, the political guidance was stable," says Canova, who as a French naval officer spent 10 years in Combat Information Centres onboard destroyers involved in NATO operations and exercises during the Cold War and was eventually named a French liaison to NATO. He notes "the resources were high and the technology factor was mandatory," and industry responded with ever-newer high-tech advancements. The 10 Worst Video Game Systems of All Time The modeling and simulation through Battle Labs is just one way that networking and modern computer technologies are put to good use at NATO, the intergovernmental military alliance formed after World War II that counts more than two dozen nations as members. Today, the world is different, embroiled in an economic crisis  that has led to shrinking budgets, and "the threats are diverse, there are regional conflicts," Canova says. Military forces of nations are far more likely to acquire software off the shelf, but there are still significant obstacles in terms of interoperability when NATO has to grapple with. This all contributes to what can seen as a more unstable environment for NATO to confront.

There's a need for greater interoperability in collecting and sharing intelligence assets collected by unmanned aerial vehicles, for example, Canova says, but NATO can't dictate to its membership what to do. "NATO cannot be prescriptive in asking countries to invest in specific technologies," Canova says. In addition, modeling and simulation games are playing an increasingly important role in tactical training, and the NATO looks to input from academia on how to improve them. But for Canova and his group in NATO's Future Capabilities Research and Technology arm, it's easy to envision a wish list where industry would focus on coming up with more powerful force-protection technologies, friend-foe systems and ruggedized and secure networking technologies for use in remote locations.

FBI says trio of terrorism e-mails are scams

The FBI today warned that three separate e-mails making the rounds that promise access to FBI terrorism reports are nothing more than malicious software looking to steal your personal information. Fraudulent e-mails containing the subject line "New DHS Report" have been circulating since August 15, 2009. The e-mails claim to be from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the FBI Counterterrorism Division. Network World Extra: 12 changes that would give US cybersecurity a much needed kick in the pants The three scam-mails are: • Fraudulent e-mail claiming to be from Department of Homeland Security and the FBI Counterterrorism Division.

The e-mail text contains information about "New Usama Bin Ladin Speech Directed to the People of Europe," and has an attachment titled "audio.exe." The attachment is purportedly an audio speech from Bin Ladin; however, it actually contains malicious software intended to steal information from the recipient's system. • Fraudulent e-mail message claiming to contain a confidential FBI report titled "New Patterns in Al-Qaeda Financing" has been circulating since August 15, 2009. The e-mail has the subject line "Intelligence Bulletin No. 267," and contains an attachment titled "bulletin.exe." This message, or similar messages, may contain files that are harmful to the recipient's system and may try to steal user credentials. • A fraudulent e-mail, initially appearing around June 16, 2009, claims to contain a confidential FBI report from the FBI "Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate." The subject line of the email is "RE: Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate," and contains an attachment "reports.exe". This message and similar messages may contain a file related to the "W32.Waledac" trojan software, which is designed to steal user authentication credentials or send spam messages. Such bulletins shall not be released, either in written or oral form, to the media, the general public, or other personnel who do not have a valid need-to-know without prior approval from an authorized FBI official, as such release could jeopardize national security. Below is an example of the fraudulent e-mail message: CLASSIFIEDFEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATIONINTELLIGENCE BULLETINWeapons of Mass Destruction DirectorateHANDLING NOTICE: Recipients are reminded that FBI Intelligence Bulletins contain sensitive terrorism and counterterrorism information meant for use primarily within the law enforcement and homeland security communities. Link to malicious software (report.exe) The malware warning comes on the heels of an FBI report that fraudsters are targeting social networking sites with increased frequency and users need to take precautions. One involves the use of spam to promote phishing sites, claiming there has been a violation of the terms of agreement or some other type of issue which needs to be resolved.

The FBI said scammers continue to hijack accounts on social networking sites and spread malicious software by using various techniques. Other spam entices users to download an application or view a video. Once the user responds to the phishing site, downloads the application, or clicks on the video link, their computer, telephone or other digital device becomes infected, the FBI stated. Some spam appears to be sent from users' "friends", giving the perception of being legitimate. Another fraudster favorite involves applications advertised on social networking sites, which appear legitimate; however, some of these applications install malicious code or rogue anti-virus software, the FBI stated.

DoD: open source as good as proprietary software

The Department of Defense Tuesday clarified its stance on open source software saying it is equal to commercial software in almost all cases and by law should be considered by the agency when making technology purchase decisions. It was issued by David Wennergren, deputy CIO of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). In terms of guidance, the memo said OSS meets the definition of "commercial computer software" and that executive agencies are required to include open source when evaluating software that meets their computing needs. The memo was not a policy statement but instead a clarification and guidance on the use of open source software (OSS) within the agency. Top 10 Open Source Hall of Famers In addition, the memo lays out a list of open source positives, including broad peer-review that helps eliminate defects, modification rights that help speed changes when needed, a reduction in the reliance on proprietary vendors, a licensing model that facilitates quick provisioning, cost reduction in some cases, reduction in maintenance and ownership costs, and favorable characteristics for rapid prototyping and experimentation. "I would consider this a milestone day" said John Scott, director of open source software and open integration for Mercury Federal Systems, a technology consultancy to the U.S. government.

But it is not just about usage, it is also about helping create [OSS] by submitting changes back out to the public." Scott says he believes this is the first time guidance has been issued about sharing the government's own open source changes with the public. Scott helped draft some of the open source guidance contained in the memo, which took about 18 months to draft. "The [2003] policy study was OK to use, but this one goes a bit further in expanding on what open source is and why you would want to use it. The memo, an update to a 2003 DoD open source directive, clarified the use of sharing code saying there is a misconception within the agency that modifications must be released to the public. "In contrast, many open source licenses permit the user to modify OSS for internal use without being obligated to distribute source code to the public," the memo says. On the other hand, the DoD says code fixes and enhancements developed for the government should be released to the public, but only under certain conditions, such as the absence of export or other federal restrictions. It goes on to advise users to understand distribution requirements for open source licenses and mentions the GNU General Public License and its specific distribution rules.

The memo also makes a distinction between freeware and open source software, which previously was the source of confusion and debate within the agency, Scott said. In fact, Scott says from one-third to one-half of the software used inside the DoD is open source. The DoD already has open source running as part of classified and unclassified systems. The memo defines OSS as "software for which the human-readable source code is available for use, study, reuse, modification, enhancement, and redistribution by the users of that software." The DoD memo comes on the heels of the Obama Administration selecting Drupal to power its whitehouse.gov Web site Follow John on Twitter: twitter.com/johnfontana

Microsoft adds app, data marketplace to Windows Azure

Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday that its upcoming Windows Azure cloud computing platform will come with marketplaces for both online apps built to run on Azure as well as datasets that companies can use to build their own apps. PinPoint will compete with Salesforce.com Inc.'s 4-year-old AppExchange online marketplace and other more recently-emerging app stores. PinPoint.com will host business-oriented apps developed by Microsoft partners, chief software architect Ray Ozzie said during a keynote speech at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference 2009 (PDC09) in Los Angeles. Azure will also host "an open catalog and marketplace for public and commercial data" codenamed Dallas , Ozzie said.

Dallas is now in Commercial Technical Preview. Developers can use the data to build their own services and mashups. Microsoft is also bolstering Azure with management tools for developers running .Net apps on-premises and with Azure that are less sexy, but arguably more essential. Azure will be hosted at three pairs of data centers: Chicago and San Antonio for North America, Dublin and Amsterdam for Europe, and Singapore and Hong Kong for Asia. Windows Azure, meanwhile, will officially go into production on January 1, but customers won't be billed until February 1, Ozzie said.

Azure will compete with Salesforce, Amazon.com and many other cloud platform providers. This vision of "three screens and the cloud" will allow developers to build apps that can be reused and delivered via the cloud (Windows Azure), on-premises server (Windows Server) or desktop (Windows 7), depending on what is most convenient or offers the best performance, Ozzie said. "When it comes to the cloud, bet on Windows," he said. The key difference is that Azure, rather than dumping the desktop entirely for the Web, keeps the Windows operating system in the equation. To demonstrate how far Windows Azure has come, Microsoft enlisted the aid of some traditional antagonists: Silicon Valley startups and the federal government. Another San Franciso startup, Seesmic, is building a Twitter app running on Windows using Microsoft's Silverlight rich media player, said CEO Loic LeMeur.

San Francisco-based Automattic Inc. is using Azure to host parts of its popular Wordpress blogging platform, said founder Matt Mullenweg. NASA is releasing 3D imagery from the Mars rover vehicle for free to the general public via the Dallas data feed. He likened the potential "explosion" of apps to the one that followed after the U.S. government liberalized the availability of GPS data. Federal CIO Vivek Kundra said the government plans to accelerate the release of more data to the public. To demonstrate that Azure can scale to needs, Microsoft's president of its Server & Tools Division, Bob Muglia, cited its Bing search app, which runs on more than 100,000 servers. Sydney will go into beta next year.

Muglia also announced Project Sydney, which will allow companies to connect their own servers to Azure-based services. Finally, Muglia announced a beta of an application server for Windows Server called AppFabric. It includes features from the Dublin app server and the Velocity caching technology. AppFabric will help developers manage both on-premises servers and Azure cloud-based services. AppFabric will go into beta next year.

Microsoft touts groundbreaking 'clip-on' for Active Directory

LOS ANGELES - Microsoft will pass out beta code Wednesday it hopes will define the next evolution of directories. The code is so early-stage it does not have an official name, although internally Microsoft calls it Next Generation Active Directory (NGAD). Microsoft introduced NGAD, which it calls a directory federation technology, on the second day of its annual Professional Developers Conference going on this week. It's a modular add-on that is built on a database and designed to add querying capabilities and performance never before possible in a directory. Microsoft sets Windows Azure production date NGAD, however, is not a replacement for Active Directory but a "clip-on" that provides developers a single programming API for building access controls into applications that can run either internally, on devices or on Microsoft's Azure cloud operating system.

NGAD stores directory data in an SQL-based database and utilizes its table structure and query capabilities to express claims about users such as "I am over 21" or "Henry is my manager." To ensure security, each claim is signed by an issuing source, such as a company, and the signatures stay with the claim no matter where it is stored. "You can answer questions in your directory that are currently impossible to even ask," says Kim Cameron, identity architect at Microsoft. "You can find out who had access to a file last September." He says NGAD is a reshaping of the programming model for Active Directory. Users will not have to alter their existing directories but will have to option to replicate data to NGAD instances. In addition, the directory design means multitudes of new cloud or other applications won't be hammering the central Active Directory architecture with lookup requests and administrators don't have to perform often tricky updates to directory schema to support those new applications. "I don't want to do anything to let anybody think that I am going to diddle with Active Directory infrastructure, yet I want to leverage the infrastructure," Cameron says. Instead, users have multiple NGADs deployed to support specific cloud, internal or device-based applications. "From the point of view of AD these would look like domain controllers, but you could do these magic queries," Cameron says. "I could say who are all the people who report up to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer; in AD that query would take hours." The most unique characteristic of NGAD is its SQL database foundation. The intent is to create a "logical directory" that shares architecture elements such as schema and APIs but is not one monolithic identity store. It includes an SQL-based "Repository", a central management database for application metadata that includes an identity deployment model.

Identity and a System. NGAD also introduces a schema called System. Identity API. The API exposes the schema to developers through LINQ. The directory also incorporates the "M" modeling language. Identity schema has been available in Microsoft's Oslo CTP but the API is new. The System. As an add-on NGAD is similar in concept to Active Directory Federation Services, a module for sharing authentication, and Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), which will eventually give way to NGAD. NGAD lets users create complex relationships among the data it stores such as friends, colleagues, roles, management chains, service assignments and machine sets.

Another evolutionary element is support for the newest Web technologies such as RSS and REST to create a connection between instances of NGAD and an application or service. Those relationships can be used to create detailed claims that govern access control Currently, AD's only relationship construct is "group." "In a directory there isn't the ability to do the kinds of relationships that you can do even in the world's worst database,"Cameron says. For example, an application could subscribe to an NGAD instance via RSS and receive updates to the claims data it stores. "We are taking what we learned with LDAP generation directories and adding a kind of self-knowledge. He says NGAD is in the very early stages and "there are still some really hard problems to solve." Microsoft's goal at PDC is to talk directly to developers, get them to look at the API, let them figure out how the new schema works and then listen to their feedback. "We want to be open with what we are doing and have a relationship with the industry and lay it all out there," says Cameron, who over the past years has championed an industry-wide effort to create a standard framework around identity. The system knows how to update the data," Cameron says.

He says this new effort won't be Microsoft centric and that his hope is for another standards-based industry push to define the technology. As Microsoft builds out its story around the cloud-based Azure platform, NGAD is one of the foundational elements developers can take advantage of for access control. NGAD is the next step in Microsoft's claims-based Identity MetaSystem strategy, which began in 2005 and defines a distributed identity architecture for multi-vendor platforms. Microsoft did not lay out a timeframe for the NGAD directory add-on, but if it follows previous directory innovations by the company it could be released as a stand-alone product or baked into the next version of Windows. Follow John Fontana on Twitter: twitter.com/johnfontana

You don't know tech: The InfoWorld news quiz

It was hard to follow tech news this week without getting icky lawyer-stuff all over you. Also: A former high-tech CEO looks for better position in D.C., and Google seeks employees who speak nothing but geek. AT&T filed suit against Verizon, Intel got sued by New York State, an alleged cable modem hacker got indicted, and EMI sued to stop a tiny music Web site from sharing The Beatles' love. Do you have the qualifications to ace this week's quiz?

Now hand over your résumé and begin. 1. The Beatles' music will finally be available in disc-less digital form this December. Give yourself 10 points and a pat on the back for each correct answer. Where will you soon be able to find the Fab Four? a. On Apple's iTunes Storeb. On Verizon phonesd. At BlueBeat.comc. On an apple-shaped USB drive 2. New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is beating on Intel like a drum, accusing the chip giant of all manner of bad behavior.

What's the dispute about? a. Verizon's attempts to wrest the iPhone from AT&T b. AT&T's claim to offer the "fastest 3G network" c. Verizon's exorbitant early termination fees d. Maps 4. Pew Research has conducted a study of the dominant ways people interact. Which of the following is one of the official charges? a. Misleading advertising b. Strong-arming PC makers using bribery and coercion c. Shipping defective merchandise d. Charging exorbitant early termination fees 3. AT&T is suing Verizon. How many days per year, on average, do Americans communicate via cell phone? a. 210 b. 195 c. 125 d. 72 5. Watch your back, Twitter. What's this new blessed blog called? a. TweetBabyJesus b. HeavenlyTwits c. ChristianChirp d. ChristianTwerp 6. "The decisions made in Washington impact every family and every business, of any size, in America. A new microblog has formed and it's apparently got God on its side. Throughout my career, I've brought people together and solved problems, and that is what I plan to do in government: Set aside ego and partisanship and work to develop solutions to our problems." What former high-tech CEO plans to bring the hard-won lessons of business management to Washington, D.C.? a. Jerry Yang b. Carly Fiorina c. Hector Ruiz d. Meg Whitman 7. Alleged cable modem hacker Ryan Harris was indicted this week by federal prosecutors in California.

Which of the following questions is not on Lin's list? a. How many golf balls can fit in a school bus? b. There's a latency problem in South Africa. What is Harris's hacker alias? a. DerCable b. DerEngel c. DerSpiegel d. DerWeinerschnitzel 8. Careers coach Lewis Lin has released a list of 140 questions Google asks of prospective employees. Diagnose it. c. Explain the significance of "dead meat." d. Why are manhole covers round? 9. The Doodle - the six-letter logo that adorns Google's otherwise sparse home page - changed multiple times in the last week to honor various icons of childhood. Add the volume of apps in the iPhone Store, rounded to the nearest large number. Which of the following was not a Google Doodle? a. Wallace and Gromit b. Sesame Street c. Asterix & Obelix d. The Great Pumpkin 10. Take the number of iPhones Apple sold the first weekend it was available in China and multiply by the new early termination fee Verizon plans to charge users of smartphones who bail on their contracts. Download that to your Windows Mobile phone and pray someone will buy you an iPhone for Christmas.

Where will you soon be able to find the Fab Four? What do you get? a. 1,850,000 b. 185,000 c. 18,500 d. 1,850 Answer key Question 1: The Beatles' music will finally be available in disc-less digital form this December. Correct Answer: On an apple-shaped USB drive The digitally remastered tunes will be available from record company EMI on a 16GB key drive shipped in a container made to resemble Apple Corp.'s Granny Smith-style logo. Tomorrow never knows. At press time BlueBeat.com, which was selling Beatles tracks for 25 cents each, found itself sued by EMI. The odds of the site surviving until December?

Question 2: New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is beating on Intel like a drum, accusing the chip giant of all manner of bad behavior. Correct Answer: Strong-arming PC makers using bribery and coercion Cuomo's 83-page complaint echoes what the European Union fined Intel $1.5 billion for, and AMD has been suing Intel over since 2005 - the company kicked back billions to computer makers who agreed to limit the use of AMD chips in their machines, and threatened those who would not be bribed. Which of the following is one of the official charges? Others argue that, with the price of computers plummeting regardless of Intel's bad behavior, the harm to consumers is largely imaginary. Question 3: AT&T is suing Verizon. Looks like somebody's running for governor.

What's the dispute about? AT&T claims the map ad is misleading because it implies AT&T offers no data coverage over much of the United States, when it in fact offers slower 2G service. Correct Answer: Maps More specifically, AT&T is suing Verizon over an ad campaign showing maps of their respective 3G coverage, with Verizon's mostly full and AT&T's nearly empty. Thus suggesting a new AT&T ad slogan: Slow service is better than no service. How many days per year, on average, do Americans communicate via cell phone? Question 4: Pew Research has conducted a study of the dominant ways people interact.

Correct Answer: 195 According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, Americans communicate face to face an average of 210 days a year, followed by mobile phones (195 days), texting and landlines (tied at 125), e-mail (72), instant messaging (55), and social networks (39). Their conclusion: Technology is not turning us into hermits. Pew did not release data showing how many people talk on their phones, text, or e-mail during face-to-face meetings. The caveat? Question 5: Watch your back, Twitter. What's this new blessed blog called?

A new microblog has formed and it's apparently got God on its side. Correct Answer: ChristianChirp The service was launched by Net entrepreneur James L. Paris after Twitter allegedly shut down his account temporarily for "posting an article in support of Rush Limbaugh." FYI, Paris's other venture, ChristianMoney.com, aims to "help you make the most of God's money." Because, after all, He's got more money than, well, Himself. Throughout my career, I've brought people together and solved problems, and that is what I plan to do in government: Set aside ego and partisanship and work to develop solutions to our problems." What former high-tech CEO plans to bring the hard-won lessons of business management to Washington, D.C.? Correct Answer: Carly Fiorina The former HP chief confirmed long-standing rumors by officially joining the U.S. Senate race in California. Question 6: "The decisions made in Washington impact every family and every business, of any size, in America. She'll be fighting Republican Assemblyman Chuck Devore for the chance to challenge Senator Barbara Boxer a year from now. Question 7: Alleged cable modem hacker Ryan Harris was indicted this week by federal prosecutors in California.

Considering the shape HP was in when she left, Fiorina might have a better shot running on the Amnesia Party ticket. What is Harris's hacker alias? He's facing up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Correct Answer: DerEngel Harris, author of "Hacking the Cable Modem," has been charged with conspiracy and fraud for allegedly selling software and modded modems that allowed customers to access cable ISPs and/or boost their bandwidth for free. No word yet whether he also plans to run for the Senate in California.

Which of the following questions is not on Lin's list? Question 8: Careers coach Lewis Lin has released a list of 140 questions Google asks of prospective employees. Correct Answer: Explain the significance of "dead meat." The actual question is "Explain the significance of 'dead beef'," the answer to which involves hexidecimal code. So unless you bone up before the interview, you are in fact dead meat. The other questions on Lin's list are equally baffling to the uninitiated. So much for those dreams of a comfortable retirement fueled by Google stock options.

Which of the following was not a Google Doodle? Question 9: The Doodle - the six-letter logo that adorns Google's otherwise sparse home page - changed multiple times in the last week to honor various icons of childhood. Correct Answer: The Great Pumpkin However, which Google Doodle you saw depended on where you were sitting. Question 10: Take the number of iPhones Apple sold the first weekend it was available in China and multiply by the new early termination fee Verizon plans to charge users of smartphones who bail on their contracts. Googlers in the United Kingdom saw Wallace and Gromit (in honor of the animated duo's 20th anniversary). U.S. searchers saw the Doodle visited by the Cookie Monster, Big Bird, and others (Sesame Street turned 40 this week). Ancient Gauls Asterix & Obelix got the Doodle treatment for their 50th anniversary (visible in 43 countries, but not the States). Also in the mix: various Doodles for Halloween and the Day of the Dead (in Mexico). Do you suppose Google has a Chief Doodle Officer, and if so, what kind of questions would you need to answer to get that job? Add the volume of apps in the iPhone Store, rounded to the nearest large number.

What do you get? Download that to your Windows Mobile phone and pray someone will buy you an iPhone for Christmas. Correct Answer: 1,850,000 China Unicom signed up 5,000 new subscribers, or one iPhone for every 263,000 people. (By contrast, Apple sold 1 million 3GS models over a similar time frame in Europe and the United States.) Verizon plans to ding its customers $350 for weaseling out of their commitments, minus $10 for every month they stayed in contract - or roughly double what it charged in the past. So 5K * 350 + 100K = 1,850,000. Subtract the apps related to beer drinking, plastic surgery, or farting, though, and you're down to around 10,000. Come back next week for another gaseous quiz. Apple proudly announced its iPhone Store now serves more than 100,000 apps.

New York Times tricked into serving scareware ad

Scammers tricked the New York Times' Digital Advertising department into placing a malicious ad for fake antivirus software on the NYTimes.com Web site over the weekend, the company confirmed Monday. According to the Times, the scammers initially claimed to be Internet phone provider Vonage, and had placed what appeared to be legitimate Vonage ads on the Web site. The newspaper had warned of the scam advertisement Sunday, after receiving about 100 e-mails from concerned readers.

However, sometime over the weekend, they switched these ads for aggressive pop-up advertisements that tried to trick victims into thinking that their computers were infected. When the complaints started pouring in, the Times first suspected that the ad had been unauthorized, and pulled third-party advertisements from the site. The point of the scam was to sell worried computer users a product called Personal Antivirus, a fake "scareware" product that bombards victims with popup ads until they either hand over their credit card information or somehow manage to remove the program. But on Monday spokeswoman Diane McNulty confirmed that the ad had been submitted directly to the company's online ad department. "The culprit masqueraded as a national advertiser and provided seemingly legitimate product advertising for a week," she said via email. "Over the weekend, the ad being served up was switched so that an intrusive message, claiming to be a virus warning from the reader's computer, appeared. " Technology executive Troy Davis was hit with the ad after he clicked on a Times story about Dubai on Saturday night. This gave the criminals a way to include embedded Web pages in their copy that could be hosted on a completely different server, outside of the control of the Times. After his antivirus software warned him not to visit the article, he performed an analysis of the site and discovered that the Times was allowing advertisers to embed an HTML element known as an iframe into their advertisements.

Apparently the scammers waited until the weekend, when it would be hardest for IT staff to respond, before switching the ad by inserting new JavaScript code into that iframe. It was, of course, all just a fake. That code redirected Davis's browser to the Web site that served a pop-up ad designed to look like a Windows system scan that had found security problems on his system.

Brocade partners with Thales for network-based encryption appliance

Data storage switch maker Brocade Communications Systems Inc. and Thales e-Security Inc. today announced the integration of the Thales Encryption Manager for Storage (TEMS) with the Brocade encryption SAN switches. The new switch centralizes the data encryption process within storage area networks (SANs) by eliminating the need to deploy multiple storage encryption systems in front of primary storage arrays. The combination of TEMS, a standards-based encryption key management appliance for storage, and the Brocade Encryption Switch is aimed at securing enterprise data and addressing regulatory requirements surrounding customer data. The Brocade Encryption Switch and the Brocade FS8-18 Encryption Blade the rebranded Thales TEMS - are part of a family of SAN-based encryption appliances that target sensitive corporate data with high performance and centralized fabric management for both disk and tape-based storage systems.

The TEMS encryption blade supports the draft IEEE P1619.3 key management specification. The new appliance also consolidates and automates the management of encryption keys for storage systems. According to Brocade, subsequent releases will also support the recently announced OASIS KMIP key management standard . Encrypting sensitive information has become a security requirement for organizations across all industries, especially as data breaches continue to make headlines. Pricing for the new appliance was not immediately available. Establishing standards like IEEE P1619.3 and KMIP is a significant first step toward simplifying encryption key management, but it is up to leading vendors to offer solutions that support these standards, said Jon Oltsik, principal analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group, in a statement.

University researchers to study video games' affect on health

Nine research teams from universities across the U.S. will study how interactive video games such as the Wii Active could help fight childhood obesity and how mobile phone games could help smokers quit or reduce tobacco use. Lieberman, a leading expert in the research and design of interactive media for learning and health behavior change, said the new interactive gaming studies will provide "cutting-edge, evidence-based strategies that designers will be able to use in the future to make their health games more effective." The nine teams, chosen from among 185 proposals, have been awarded between $100,000 and $300,000 each from $1.85 million in grant money offered by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation . The researchers will lead one- to two-year studies of digital games that engage players in physical activity and/or motivate them to improve how they take care of themselves through healthy changes in lifestyle; prevention behaviors; cognitive, social or physical skills; chronic disease self-management; and/or adherence to a medical treatment plan. The teams will also focus on how video games can be designed to help people change behaviors and self-manage chronic illnesses as well as improve communication with autistic patients. "Digital games are interactive and experiential, and so they can engage people in powerful ways to enhance learning and [change health-related behavior], especially when they are designed on the basis of well-researched strategies," said Debra Lieberman, a communication researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research. For example, the research teams will delve into the popular dance pad video game Dance Revolution to see how it might help Parkinson's patients reduce the risk of falling, or how facial recognition games might be designed to help people with autism better identify others' emotions.

The research teams will study participants' responses to health games played on a variety of platforms, such as video game consoles, computers, mobile phones and robots. "The pace of growth and innovation in digital games is incredible, and we see tremendous potential to design them to help people stay healthy or manage chronic conditions like diabetes or Parkinson's disease. The studies will focus on diverse population groups that vary by race and ethnicity, health status, income level and game-play setting, with age groups ranging from elementary school children to 80-year-olds. However, we need to know more about what works and what does not, and why," Paul Tarini, team director for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Pioneer Portfolio, said in a statement. The nine grant recipients are:

Phishers Dangle Some Brand-New Bait

In September 2009, some unlucky visitors at the New York Times Web site clicked on an ad that attempted to install malware. The Times later acknowledged the scam in a posting on its Web site: "Some NYTimes.com readers have seen a pop-up box warning them about a virus and directing them to a site that claims to offer antivirus software.... The advertisement displayed a popup window informing readers that their computer might be infected with a virus; only by purchasing a new antivirus product could they be sure of having a clean system.

If you see such a warning, we suggest that you not click on it. Phishing 2.0 Phishing refers to an attempt to collect usernames, passwords, and credit card data by posing as a legitimate, trusted party. Instead, quit and restart your Web browser." Phishers and scammers use this and other new tactics to deceive unsuspecting victims. Often the deception in­­volves using e-mail sent from a trusted address. Most people wouldn't reveal their social security number or mother's maiden name at a strange site.

Originally, phishing applied to the banking and payment industry only, but now it also covers theft of log-in credentials to games, and personal passwords to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Modern browsers and security software flag such content and ask you whether you're sure you want to send it; some block it with a red-and-black warning label. Fake Antivirus Software an Emerging Problem Rogue antivirus products are among the latest phishing in­­struments to appear, and many are quite convincing. So phishers have adopted new tactics. Bearing names like Antivirus 2009, AntiVirmin 2009, and AntiSpyware 2009, they have interfaces similar to those of real antivirus apps.

Such ac­­tions by phishing malware are fairly common. Some rogue antivirus products have their own keywords on search engines and cite fake reviews recommending them (including one that I supposedly wrote). The rogue antivirus product that showed up on the New York Times site installed malware that, if executed, would have lowered the security settings in Internet Explorer, run executable files, and altered the system Registry. The real security apps knew it, too: Legitimate antivirus vendors AVG, Comodo, Kaspersky, McAfee, Microsoft, Nod32, and Sophos, (among others) detected this particular piece of malware within the first few hours. In this "chat-in-the-middle" attack, as soon as the victim en­­ters a user name and password at the designated online site, a chat window opens up and a scammer posing as a customer service rep at the bank requests additional personal information to confirm the identity of the account holder. Customer-Service Fakes Another phishing gambit is a variation on an old scam: The crooks mass-mail a seemingly personalized e-mail message, ostensibly from a bank, containing a fake online chat option. By providing these details, the victim gives the thief crucial data.

Jon Miller, director of Accuvant Labs, a security consulting firm that works with Fortune 500 companies and several U.S. government contractors, says that the New York Times incident isn't unusual. Small Potatoes Roger Thompson, chief research officer at AVG, says rogue antivirus products are common: "The bad guys are clearly making money at it." Besides benefiting up front by selling the rogue antivirus product, they collect credit card information for future identity fraud. Further, he notes that he has seen an upsurge in the use of malware tailored to customers of particular banks and other financial institutions. For phishing attacks such as fake chat sessions and fake keywords, AVG's Thompson says, users need to develop a healthy dose of skepticism, and learn how to kill the browser using Task Manager. Protect Yourself AVG makes a free product called LinkScanner that blocks new phishing attacks, yet allows users to safely view any site.

That won't stop Web-based exploits, but it will give you a way to defeat social engineering attacks. Accuvant's Miller recommends several common-sense antiphishing strategies:

Otellini says PC industry on brink of recovery

The PC industry is set to come out of the most damaging recession in decades as computer shipments begin to pick up, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said on Tuesday. Otellini said he is "personally" betting that in the coming quarters the PC industry is likely to see flat or positive growth in shipments compared to 2008. The recovery has already started and the best is yet to come, he said. Chip shipments are stabilizing as PC shipments start to rise, Otellini said during a keynote speech at the Intel Developer Forum trade show in San Francisco. "This is an environment where we have had the worst recession in 70 years," Otellini said. "The market is poised for a resurgence and we will see how 2010 plays out," he said.

The PC industry has been more resilient than expected and the trend should continue going ahead. Otellini's comments on the PC industry are stronger than conservative outlooks provided for an expected PC industry recovery from companies like Advanced Micro Devices and Dell. The recovery will help Intel, which makes the chips that power most PCs, he said. "It shows we have built something that's indispensable," Otellini said. Analyst firm IDC in July said PC shipments for the second quarter of 2009 were stronger than expectations, propped up by consumer spending and lower prices. Netbooks have helped stabilize PC shipments over the past few quarters, Otellini said. Worldwide PC shipments in the second quarter fell 3.1 percent compared to the same quarter a year earlier, to 66 million units, according to IDC. IDC had originally projected a drop of 6.3 percent.

Netbooks are inexpensive laptops characterized by small screens and keyboards. Otellini said netbook shipments outpaced those of Nintendo's Wii gaming console in 2006 and Apple's iPhone in 2007; those products were wildly successful when they were launched, respectively, in those years. They are designed to run basic Internet applications and office productivity applications like word processing. Intel ships Atom processors for netbooks, which first made an appearance in 2007. Otellini also criticized the European Commission for ignoring possible evidence in its antitrust investigation. The Commission on Monday released a nonconfidential version of the ruling that detailed e-mail exchanges between Intel and computer manufacturers.

The EC found Intel guilty of anticompetitive behavior, but Intel believes the regulator was selective with evidence it looked at and, essentially, came in with a "predisposed view" to find the company guilty, Otellini said. The EC described the e-mail exchanges as "smoking gun" evidence in the probe, which resulted in the chip maker being fined €1.06 billion (US$1.45 billion) in May. The EC has consistently ignored evidence and painted a different picture around the memos, he said. Intel has never attempted to quash competitors by setting up conditional deals with PC makers, Otellini said. Intel has its side of the story to tell, but it can't offer additional information for the time being, as it was under restrictions concerning the release of documents.

Otellini also made a number of announcements at the keynote, including the introduction of a new developer program around the Atom mobile processor. But it hopes to release documents at some point to tell its side of the story. The program will help developers write and port existing programs for use on PCs, like netbooks, based on Atom processors. Otellini said applications will mostly be sold in the app stores, much like how Apple sells iPhone applications for the iPhone. It will also provide the tools and software development kits to developers and help sell applications.

The program will first apply to netbooks and then expand to other mobile devices. Intel has partnered with Asustek Computer, Acer and Dell for the program.

iStockphoto guarantees its collection

Starting today, iStockphoto, the micropayment royalty-free image, video, and audio provider, will legally guarantee its entire collection from copyright, moral right, trademark, intellectual property, and rights of privacy disputes for up to $10,000. The new iStock Legal Guarantee, delivered at no cost to customers, covers the company's entire 5 million-plus collection. Recently however, Vivozoom, another microstock company, took a similar action to guarantee its collection. Additional coverage for an Extended Legal Guarantee totaling $250,000 is available for the purchase of 100 iStock credits. "Our first line of defense has always been-and continues to be-our rigorous inspection process," said Kelly Thompson, chief operating officer of iStockphoto. "The Legal Guarantee is simply an added layer of protection for our customers, many of whom are using microstock more than ever before." Although common for traditional stock houses, such legal guarantees have not been standard in microstock because of the low prices. iStock says that files purchased and used in accordance with its license will not breach any trademark, copyright, or other intellectual property rights or rights of privacy.

And, if a customer does get a claim, iStock will cover the customer's legal costs and direct damages up to a combined total of $10,000. iStock customers can increase their coverage for legal fees and direct damages up to a combined total of $250,000 by purchasing the Extended Legal Guarantee via the iStock credits (which costs between $95 and $138). iStock expects that this program will be popular with a very small percentage of sophisticated media buyers with very specific needs, and considers it to be a value-added service to customers rather than a major source of revenue.

Scammers auto-generate Twitter accounts to spread scareware

Scammers are increasingly using machine-generated Twitter accounts to post messages about trendy topics, and tempt users into clicking on a link that leads to servers hosting fake Windows antivirus software, security researchers said Monday. The accounts, which use variable account and user names, supposedly represent U.S. Twitter users. The latest Twitter attacks originated with malicious accounts cranked out by software, said experts at both F-Secure and Sophos. In some cases, the background wallpaper is customized for each account, yet another tactic to make the unwary think that a real person is responsible for the content.

Some of the tweets exploit Twitter's current "Trending Topics," the constantly-changing top 10 list of popular tweet keywords that the micro-blogging service posts on its home page. Tweets from those accounts are also automatically generated, said Sean Sullivan, a security advisor with the North American labs of Helsinki-based F-Secure. Others are repeats of real tweets. The defense, however, has regularly been subverted by hacker-built software, or by humans who contract to decipher the characters manually. "There's nothing cookie-cutter about these accounts," noted Sullivan, who added that scareware scammers aren't afraid to spend money to make money. All the tweets include links to sites that try to dupe users into downloading and installing bogus security software, often called "scareware" because they fool users with sham infection warnings, then provide endless pop-ups until people pay $40 to $50 to buy the useless program. "As fast as Twitter can shut down the accounts, [the scammers] create new accounts," said Sullivan. "Somehow they're getting around the CAPTCHA, but how they're doing it, whether with a bot or by CAPTCHA farms, we don't know." CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) is the technology that uses distorted, scrambled characters to block automated registration of accounts.

There's a lot of the latter to be had. Because the scareware tweets use a URL shortening service - as do most tweets to crowd as much as possible into Twitter's 140-character limit - it's impossible for users to tell exactly where the link will take them. Last year, botnet researcher Joe Stewart of SecureWorks said there was evidence some hackers were making as much as $5 million a year shilling scareware. "A lot of these scareware campaigns don't last 24 hours," said Beth Jones, a threat researcher at U.K.-based Sophos. "By the time a [distribution] site is blocked, they've already moved on to something else." The servers hosting the phony security software behind the Twitter attacks are located in Toronto, said Jones, who said Sophos had been monitoring those systems since June. Jones suggested that users access Twitter with a third-party application, such as TweetDeck, which offers a URL previewer to show the actual destination. Unfortunately, the scammers are using the Metamark shortening service ; TweetDeck doesn't support previews for Metamark. "Scammers are using Twitter because it's a new conduit for spreading their scareware," said Jones. "They go where the money is, which means where people are, and people are on Twitter." By late Monday, Twitter had deleted the machine-generated accounts spreading scareware that Sophos and F-Secure had revealed, but some tweets with the same malicious URL were still available on the service.

Computer programmers set for smash-mouth brain battle

A smart people smack-down is set to start next week where thousands of university computer researchers will pit their brains and machines in a grueling battle of logic, strategy, and mental endurance. Layer 8 Extra: 15 genius algorithms that aren't boring During the competition, ten to twelve problems are attempted in a five hour period. The 34th annual IBM-sponsored Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Contest (ICPC) pits teams of three university students against eight or more complex, real-world problems, with a nerve-wracking five-hour deadline. The problems are of varying difficulty and flavor.

The goal is that every team solve two problems, that every problem is solved, and that no team solve them all, according to ACM. Contests in the past have included problems that searched for a missing boat at sea, triangulated the location of a faulty transmitter, computed golf handicaps, stacked pipe of varying diameters in a fixed width bin, coded or decoded messages, printed braille, sought an exit to a maze, processed satellite images and solved a math problem. ACM says it wants two problems that could be solved in an hour by a first or second year student, two that could be solved in an hour by a third year student, and two that will likely determine the winners. Problems are presented with no more than a page of text, a helpful illustration, a sample input set with and accepted output set, ACM states. And judging is relentlessly strict, IBM says. Teammates collaborate to rank the difficulty of the problems, deduce the requirements, design test beds, and build smart software systems that solve the problems under the intense scrutiny of expert judges. The students are given a problem statement, not a requirements document.

Each incorrect solution submitted is assessed a time penalty. They are given an example of test data, but they do not have access to the judges' test data and acceptance criteria. The team that solves the most problems in the fewest attempts in the least cumulative time is declared the winner. Some problems require a knowledge and understanding of advanced algorithms. For a well-versed computer science student, some of the problems require precision only.

Still others are simply too hard to solve - except for the world's brightest problem-solvers, according to IBM. The Battle of the Brains is the largest and most prestigious computing competition in the world, with more than tens of thousands of students from universities in approximately 90 countries on six continents participating. Previously, the 2009 ACM-ICPC World Finals took place in Stockholm, Sweden, where a team from St. Petersburg University of Information Technology, Mechanics and Optics in Russia emerged as the world champion for the second year in a row. Since IBM began sponsoring the contest in 1997, participation has grown from 1,100 to more than 7,100 teams. Regional bouts will begin in the United States on October 18 and continue through December, sweeping from continent to continent. Only 100 three-person teams will advance to the World Finals on February 5, 2010 hosted by Harbin Engineering University in Harbin, China. "The ACM-ICPC affords students the opportunity to showcase their talents and gain exposure among top recruiters," said Dr. Bill Poucher, ICPC Executive Director and Baylor University Professor. "The contest is also a forum for advancing technology in an effort to better accommodate the growing needs of the future."

Gartner: Turn server heat up to 75

Data center managers should turn server temperatures up to 75 degrees Fahrenheit, and adopt more aggressive policies for IT energy measurement, Gartner says in a new report.  Five tools to prevent energy waste in the data center After conducting a Web-based survey of 130 infrastructure and operations managers, Gartner concluded that measurement and monitoring of data center energy use will remain immature through 2011. Only 7% of respondents said their top priorities include procurement of green products and pushing vendors to create more energy efficient technology. In a troubling sign, 48% of respondents have not yet considered metrics for energy management. In general, data center managers are not paying enough attention to measuring, monitoring and modeling of energy use. "Although the green IT and data center energy issue has been on the agenda for some time now, many managers feel that they have to deal with more immediate concerns before focusing attention on their suppliers' products," Rakesh Kumar, research vice president at Gartner, said in a news release. "In other words, even if more energy efficient servers or energy management tools were available, data center and IT managers are far more interested in internal projects like consolidation, rationalization and virtualization." About 63% of survey respondents expect to face data center capacity constraints in the next 18 months, and 15% said they are already using all available capacity and will have to build new data centers or refurbish existing ones within the next year.

Gartner issued four recommendations for improving energy management: • Raise the temperature at the server inlet point up to 71 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 degrees Celsius), but use sensors to monitor potential hotspots. • Develop a dashboard of data center energy-efficient metrics that provides appropriate data to different levels of IT and financial management. • Use the SPECpower benchmark to evaluate the relative energy efficiency of servers. • Improve the use of the existing infrastructure through consolidation and virtualization before building out or buying new/additional data center floor space. CDW surveyed 752 IT pros in U.S. organizations for its 2009 Energy Efficient IT Report, finding that 59% are training employees to shut down equipment when they leave the office, and 46% have implemented or are implementing server virtualization. In addition to Gartner's report, a recent survey by CDW illustrates trends related to data center efficiency. The recession has helped convince IT organizations of the financial value of power-saving measures, with greater numbers implementing storage virtualization, and managing cable placement to keep under-floor cooling chambers open and thus reduce demand on cooling systems. Data center managers are finding it easier to identify energy efficient equipment because of the Environmental Protection Agency's new Energy Star program for servers.

CDW found that 43% of IT shops have implemented remote monitoring and management of their data centers, up from 29% the year before. But data centers are still missing many opportunities to save money on energy costs. "Energy reduction efforts are yielding significant results … Still, most are spending millions more on energy than necessary," CDW writes. "If the average organization surveyed were to take full advantage of energy-savings measures, IT professionals estimate they could save $1.5M annually." Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter 

HP's DreamScreen aims to cut ties to the PC

HP is trying to revive the idea of placing smart screens around the home to display content from the Web and PCs, though the number of Web sites available at first will be very limited. It can also be hooked up to a PC to play music or video stored on the computer in a different room, or to display photos like a digital picture frame. "What we're really trying to do is bring a simple, user-intuitive device that's always on, always connected to the Internet, to bring Web applications that don't require PCs," said Ameer Karim, director of worldwide marketing with HP's futures and innovations group. The HP DreamScreen, announced Thursday, can display content from the Web without needing to be hooked up to a PC, using its built-in wireless connection.

The screens use a remote control and a touch panel for input, and can also be used as an alarm clock, to check the weather or to play any of about 15,000 global radio stations, HP said. Instead, HP worked with Internet companies and content providers to develop interfaces to display their content. The DreamScreens don't come with a Web browser, however, which limits the Web content that can be viewed. The initial partners are Facebook, the music site Pandora and the photo site Snapfish. The company stressed that the devices are supposed to complement PCs, not be a substitute for them. More applications may be added in the future, Karim said.

Starting a PC just to check something on the Web is time-consuming, Karim noted. The products come in 10.2- and 13.3-inch sizes, priced at US$249 and $299, respectively. The DreamScreens can be hung on a wall or put on a table in living rooms or kitchens, and look more elegant than most PCs, according to Karim. "Internally, we've been calling it 'bite-sized computing.' It's snippets of the stuff you'd normally get on a computer, but we don't really want to bring productivity here," he said. They will be available starting October in the U.S. through Best Buy, Amazon.com and other retailers. The device may support TV viewing in the future, Karim said. "It is very likely you will see these devices do all sorts of things like access content on a DVR or a set-top box." It may also pull video content from TV stations in the future.

HP didn't provide plans to sell the product worldwide. Other companies have tried to market smart screens for the home but without success. The products failed to gain traction and were eventually cancelled. A few years ago Microsoft was promoting its Windows Powered Smart Displays, which had to be connected to a PC to display Web content but were otherwise similar. HP's smart screen uses the Linux OS and comes with 2GB of internal storage so that photos, music and movies can be stored locally. It supports multiple MPEG video formats; the JPEG, PNG and bitmap (BMP) photo file formats; and MP3, WMA, AAC and WAV audio formats.

It will have a USB port and a memory card reader, from which digital content can be played. HP didn't comment about the processor inside the product. Intel has shown off TV sets and set-top boxes that run small Web applications that it says can complement TV viewing. Other companies are also experimenting with new ways to access the Internet in the home. For example, a group of friends on MySpace could chat with each other about a program they are watching.

Perot wins key health-care IT outsourcing deal in India

Perot Systems has bagged a 10-year IT outsourcing contract in India, its first outside the U.S. The win reflects Perot's bid to grow its health-care business in markets other than the U.S., as well as in emerging markets like India, China, Brazil, and Mexico, company executives said on Friday. But only 4.1 percent of the company's revenue from the health-care industry was from outside the U.S., up from 2.5 percent two years ago, said Kevin Fickenscher, executive vice president for International Healthcare at Perot, in a telephone interview. In the second quarter, 48 percent of Perot's revenue came from the health-care industry. Expansion outside the U.S. is a key focus area for Perot, said Raj Asava, Perot's chief strategy officer.

The maturing health-care industry in these emerging markets has a big appetite and also funds to invest in technologies such as electronic health records and clinical information systems, Asava said. For its health-care business, the company is targeting emerging markets in the Middle East, China, India, and Latin America, besides more mature markets such as the U.K. and Germany. The contract with Max Healthcare, a large hospital chain in India, has an initial value of US$18 million, but could go up in value as more applications and services are added, Perot said. The deployment will be around the open source VistA (Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture) electronic health record and health information system, he added. Besides running the applications already installed at Max, Perot will also deploy an electronic health records system and other IT infrastructure, Fickenscher said. Perot already has a services subsidiary in India with about 9,000 staff that offer outsourcing services to customers in the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world.

Multinational and Indian service providers are targeting India's growing services market, including in the telecommunications sector where a number of mobile service providers are outsourcing their IT infrastructure. About 60 percent of these staff do work for the health-care industry. The immediate opportunity for vendors of IT targeting the health-care industry is from private sector providers, but government run hospitals will soon follow, Fickenscher said.

HP's DreamScreen aims to cut ties to the PC

HP is trying to revive the idea of placing smart screens around the home to display content from the Web and PCs, though the number of Web sites available at first will be very limited. It can also be hooked up to a PC to play music or video stored on the computer in a different room, or to display photos like a digital picture frame. "What we're really trying to do is bring a simple, user-intuitive device that's always on, always connected to the Internet, to bring Web applications that don't require PCs," said Ameer Karim, director of worldwide marketing with HP's futures and innovations group. The HP DreamScreen, announced Thursday, can display content from the Web without needing to be hooked up to a PC, using its built-in wireless connection. The screens use a remote control and a touch panel for input, and can also be used as an alarm clock, to check the weather or to play any of about 15,000 global radio stations, HP said.

Instead, HP worked with Internet companies and content providers to develop interfaces to display their content. The DreamScreens don't come with a Web browser, however, which limits the Web content that can be viewed. The initial partners are Facebook, the music site Pandora and the photo site Snapfish. The company stressed that the devices are supposed to complement PCs, not be a substitute for them. More applications may be added in the future, Karim said.

Starting a PC just to check something on the Web is time-consuming, Karim noted. The products come in 10.2- and 13.3-inch sizes, priced at US$249 and $299, respectively. The DreamScreens can be hung on a wall or put on a table in living rooms or kitchens, and look more elegant than most PCs, according to Karim. "Internally, we've been calling it 'bite-sized computing.' It's snippets of the stuff you'd normally get on a computer, but we don't really want to bring productivity here," he said. They will be available starting October in the U.S. through Best Buy, Amazon.com and other retailers. The device may support TV viewing in the future, Karim said. "It is very likely you will see these devices do all sorts of things like access content on a DVR or a set-top box." It may also pull video content from TV stations in the future.

HP didn't provide plans to sell the product worldwide. Other companies have tried to market smart screens for the home but without success. The products failed to gain traction and were eventually cancelled. A few years ago Microsoft was promoting its Windows Powered Smart Displays, which had to be connected to a PC to display Web content but were otherwise similar. HP's smart screen uses the Linux OS and comes with 2GB of internal storage so that photos, music and movies can be stored locally. It supports multiple MPEG video formats; the JPEG, PNG and bitmap (BMP) photo file formats; and MP3, WMA, AAC and WAV audio formats.

It will have a USB port and a memory card reader, from which digital content can be played. HP didn't comment about the processor inside the product. Intel has shown off TV sets and set-top boxes that run small Web applications that it says can complement TV viewing. Other companies are also experimenting with new ways to access the Internet in the home. For example, a group of friends on MySpace could chat with each other about a program they are watching.

HP adds Snow Leopard printer drivers after customer complaints

Hewlett-Packard has added support for an additional 38 printer models or printer series to Snow Leopard, delivering on a promise made shortly after the release of Apple 's new operating system when angry users complained that older devices didn't work after upgrading. According to HP, 38 DeskJet, OfficeJet, and LaserJet drivers were added to those made available on Aug. 28, when Apple launched Snow Leopard . Although a list showing only the new drivers has not been published on either Apple's or HP's Web site, the complete list available on the former has been updated to include the new drivers, said Rick Spillers, a member of HP's Mac Connect team. On Thursday, Apple posted a printer driver update for Mac OS X 10.6 , aka Snow Leopard, but did not call out the specific drivers added to the 51MB driver download.

Among the newly-supported printers are the HP 910 inkjet printer, the DeskJet D1300 series, the OfficeJet 5500 series and the LaserJet M1120. Almost immediately after Apple started selling Snow Leopard, users who upgraded began griping on the company's support forum that their long-reliable printers were not being recognized by the new OS. Others became angry when an HP representative told them they should buy a new printer if a driver wasn't available for Snow Leopard. HP 1280 working!!!" crowed another user, "omarz," in a message Thursday. "I just update[d] to Snow Leopard 10.6.1 and now suddenly it was detected and it's working!" A driver for HP's PSC 1200 series was one of the 38 included in yesterday's update. After Thursday's update by Apple, several users reported on the same support forum that they were now able to use their formerly-bricked printers. "Today, I downloaded all the update software for printers and Mac [Snow Leopard], and everything now works fine," said someone identified as "AndyGump" on the same thread where users complained two weeks ago. "Incredible! HP's Spillers recommended that users update to Mac OS X 10.6.1 before applying the separate driver update. "Make sure that the printer is turned on and connected via [a] USB cable before launching Apple Software Update," said Spillers in an e-mail reply to questions. Apple built support into Snow Leopard for some printer makers' all-in-one devices, adding the functionality to the Image Capture application.

Spillers also said that there has been confusion about how owners of HP all-in-one devices - which both print and scan, and in some cases also fax, documents - get their hardware to work with Snow Leopard. "The other interesting thing I've found is trying to educate customers on the new scan interface for HP inkjet All-in-Ones that we've integrated with Snow Leopard," he said. HP has posted instructions on how to use its all-in-one printer/scanner hardware with Snow Leopard on its customer support site. Looking at the [support] forums, it seems that HP is the only print vendor really participating ... not sure I see much input from other print vendors." Snow Leopard users can manually download the HP driver update from Apple's site, or install it using the Mac's integrated update service. Spillers also took a shot at HP's rivals. "In general," he said, "HP did a great job providing full updated 10.6 drivers for almost all of our products, including LaserJets going back 10+ years.

Dell finds a rare bright spot in demand for iSCSI storage

Like many technology vendors, Dell has been battered in recent months by a steep drop in demand for computers and other technology products. Yet demand remains strong for one of Dell's smaller product families, the EqualLogic range of iSCSI (Internet SCSI) storage-area network products.

"A lot of the growth is coming from virtualization," said Travis Vigil, senior global manager for storage at Dell.

Dell acquired EqualLogic in January 2008, paying US$1.4 billion to acquire the company and its iSCSI product line.

ISCSI is a transport protocol that allows blocks of data to be carried over an IP network without the need for specialized networking interconnects, like Fibre Channel. The technology has gained in popularity as more companies look to virtualization to improve the efficiency and performance of servers and applications. Compared to Fibre Channel, iSCSI can be cheaper and less complex to roll out, which makes it attractive to companies worried about managing costs.

That's translated into higher demand for Dell's iSCSI products, particularly among companies with between 500 and 5,000 employees. During the first quarter, sales of EqualLogic iSCSI products rose 71 percent over the same period last year, even as Dell's overall storage sales declined by 17 percent, to $534 million.

While revenue growth was strong, the profitability of the product line cannot be determined since Dell's financial statements don't provide that level of granularity.

Analysts and others will be watching closely when Dell reports its second-quarter results later Thursday. To be sure, iSCSI storage products alone won't reverse Dell's fortunes or do much to counter a sharp slowdown in PC sales. The company estimates these products will generate $400 million in revenue this year; that's equivalent to just 0.7 percent of the $61.1 billion in revenue that Dell reported for its previous fiscal year, which ended in January.

Even so, strong demand for these products has been a rare bright spot for Dell executives who've otherwise struggled in recent quarters with sinking demand for the company's products.

Tweets from the beyond: John Quincy Adams Twittering

First the White House got a Twitter account and then, earlier this year, an astronaut became the first person to Twitter from space.

Now, someone's actually Twittering...from the grave?

Well, kind of.

Starting today, the Massachusetts Historical Society will be offering up excerpts from John Quincy Adams' line-a-day diary as tweets. The diary entries track Adams' voyage to Russia, which kicked off on Aug. 5, 1809. Two hundred years after Adams' journey began, accounts of his trip and his ensuing work as the first American ambassador to Russia will be chronicled daily on Twitter.

"We'll be posting [Adams'] exact words (his entries really do work perfectly as 140-character tweets), and, where possible, we will augment the posts with maps showing his location (thank him for providing regular latitude and longitude readings), links to longer diary entries, and other information," Jeremy Dibbell, a librarian with the Massachusetts Historical Society, wrote in a blog post. "His short entries are surprisingly rich, full of wonderful details about his reading, meals, weather, and shipboard activities."

Adams, the nation's sixth president, was the son of the second president, John Adams. Serving as a U.S. senator, the second presidential Adams also was a successful secretary of state, working out a deal to acquire Florida from Spain and helping to create the Monroe Doctrine.

And it seems that Adams was ahead of his time, writing his journal entries in nearly perfect 140-character quips - perfect for the microblogging site Twitter.

"This is an exciting opportunity for us to test out some new technological tools and to create a transcription of the line-a-day diaries, which will be useful for future projects, as well," said Dibbell. "We certainly hope others will find [Adams'] journey as fascinating as we do, so please follow him on Twitter."

Last month, a first-time novelist struggling to find a publisher for his book began releasing it 140 characters at a time on Twitter. Author Matt Stewart is in the process of publishing his novel, The French Revolutionon Twitter. It appears to be the first full-length novel to be released one tweet at a time.

Earlier this year, NASA astronaut Mike Massimino was the first person to Twitter from space. Massimino sent out tweets during his voyage in May on the space shuttle Atlantis.

Wal-Mart to apply green ratings to PCs, electronics

Wal-Mart will apply green ratings across electronics products in the future, which could help consumers select environmentally friendly products, the company said Thursday.

Products like PCs and consumer electronics that the retailer carries will contain grades about sustainability in the product information, said Kory Lundberg, a Wal-Mart spokesperson. This will add transparency to the quality and environmental friendliness of products, and provide customers with product information that wasn't previously offered.

A final decision on how the green ratings will be delivered hasn't been made, but it could be in the form of a numeric score, color code or another label type, Wal-Mart said in a fact sheet published on its Web site on Thursday.

The green tags may start going on products in five years, Lundberg said. The ratings will be applied to PCs and other consumer electronics, and the retailer is currently in the process of researching ways of tagging those products. Wal-Mart expects all of its 100,000 suppliers, including PC and consumer electronics makers, to comply with the retailer's new goal, Lundberg said.

PC makers including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Apple sell products through Wal-Mart. HP and Apple did not respond to requests for comment, but a Dell spokeswoman said the company is supporting Wal-Mart's efforts by providing feedback as the retailer develops the rating system.

"Wal-Mart is a great partner, and they're being very collaborative with partners as they develop this rating system," said Michelle Mosmeyer, a Dell spokeswoman, in an e-mail.

Wal-Mart aims to take a comprehensive look at the products - from the raw material until end-of-life disposal options, based on which it will rate products. It is taking a three-step approach to rate sustainability, which could ultimately lead to higher quality and cheaper products for consumers.

The retailer is first sending questionnaires to its suppliers worldwide to answer questions about the suppliers' commitment to the environment, manufacturing efficiency and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The answers will be collectively researched by Wal-Mart in conjunction with partners, universities and nonprofit organizations, after which standards for the ratings will be set and applied.

Wal-Mart's green ratings could put pressure on PC and consumer electronics makers to ramp up environmental efforts, said Michael Kanellos, senior analyst and editor-in-chief at GreenTech Media. Wal-Mart gets its way as the world's largest retailer, so suppliers are likely to heed its "edict," as Kanellos called it, regarding green ratings.

"If you want to make money in retail, you have to be in Wal-Mart," Kanellos said.

Governments worldwide are also putting pressure on suppliers to make products that are sustainable, so Wal-Mart's request may provide extra impetus for suppliers to jump-start efforts to incorporate green business practices, Kanellos said. It may involve the cost of hiring consultants in the short term, but prove beneficial in the long term.

PC makers are already stepping up green efforts by offering free recycling and making PCs that draw less power. Nonprofits are also putting pressure on PC makers to reduce hazardous substances in hardware.

Green ratings may not weigh on PC or TV buyers as price and brand matter more, Kanellos said. The ratings will matter more in the area of appliances, especially energy-efficient light fixtures. In homes, lighting accounts for more of an electricity bill than electronics and PCs put together, Kanellos said.

Virtuoso travel network picks Liquid Computing for data center

Virtuoso Ltd., an online network for luxury travel, recently chose a unified computing infrastructure from Liquid Computing instead of shopping for such technology from larger vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and Cisco Systems Inc.

"What made Liquid stand out was they had a background in the telecom industry and knew about [network] reliability," said Joel Chaplin, CIO for Virtuoso, in an interview. The company is based in Fort Worth, Texas, and has a data center in Seattle.

Virtuoso last year was researching ways to virtualize its data center, partly to prepare to increase its number of member users by 10 times in the next few years. Today, about 300 travel agencies with 6,000 travel specialists pay a membership fee to Virtuoso to use its network to match travel customers with a variety of tour suppliers for a range of exotic and luxury vacations.

"We needed a platform that would scale with the company as it grew, yet be more efficient and lower operating costs," Chaplin said. "We're a lean company with technology and don't have a lot of administrators, so it also had to be something easy to administer and deploy."

When the upgrade was first considered last year, Virtuoso had a "mish-mash of servers, including dozens of HP servers" and considered using HP for unified computing. Instead, it discovered Liquid, Chaplin said. "We knew the price point of Liquid would be lower than HP," he said. Cisco was expected to have a unified computing platform, but hadn't developed anything concrete, he added. Cisco's approach is only now rolling out to customers.

As it was, Virtuoso's investment with Liquid, based in Stamford, Conn., was less than $1 million, "still a big investment for us," Chaplin said. The company installed a LiquidIQ unified computing system for hosting its Web-based services for its travel network. Liquid calls LiquidIQ a "data center in a chassis" because it can integrate with NetApp Inc. to replace an assortment of server, network, storage and virtualization technologies. Virtuoso installed the first chassis in February, which went live in April, and expects to install a second chassis in the fall.

The changeover means that Virtuoso is on target to reduce its data center costs by 80%, with a smaller physical space, less power consumption and reduced administrative overhead. Already, a staff of five administrators has been reduced to two, he said.

The data center supports a sophisticated search engine that gives travel agents the ability to find suppliers for customized luxury vacations.

In addition to the expected savings with Liquid, and its background in telecom, Virtuoso found it could work easily with a smaller supplier.

"Liquid has paid attention to servicing our needs, and I could have gone with HP but there's no way I could call them up as often as I did," Chaplin said.

Analyst Zeus Kerravala of Yankee Group Inc. said Liquid's reputation is solid, even though he regards the vendor as a start-up with only a handful of announced customers for LiquidIQ.

"The technology from Liquid is more mature than Cisco has, and they've been selling it longer," Kerravala said. "HP's basically got a management front end, which isn't really the same."

The only worry with working with Liquid, like many smaller vendors, is their longevity, Kerravala added. "Liquid is an acquisition candidate for Juniper Networks, or IBM or even HP," he said. "The worry with using them would be if they went away. But as a start-up, there's no immediate harm in using their technology, and the benefit is that they can completely customize the product for a new customer."

Kerravala said Virtuoso's claim of an 80% reduction in space and power consumption is "completely believable ... unified computing is the next big trend in computing."

RSA chief: The job of security guy is not to be 'Doctor No'

Web 2.0 technologies and cloud computing are extending traditional enterprise network perimeters to the point that they are practically vanishing, says a report released this week by RSA, the security division of EMC Corp. The report further states that information security managers who understand the associated risks and learn how to manage them can help their companies adopt such technologies on their own terms.

The report also includes recommendations from 10 members of RSA's Security for Business Innovation Council, including chief information security officers from J.P. Morgan Chase, Motorola, eBay, Time Warner and RSA.

In this interview, RSA president Art Coviello talked about some of the report's key recommendations as well as other topics.

Why did RSA do this report? This report is about what we call the hyperextended enterprise, which is exactly what you think it would be. We are using the Internet as never before. There are more devices, there are far more Web applications and now with Web 2.0 and social networking, communication is instant and pretty constant.

Our dealings as businesspeople with customers, suppliers, partners, and even our own employees, has changed dramatically in just the last seven or eight years. The opportunity being created with technologies like virtualization and cloud computing is extending the perimeter out even more. It literally puts your IT infrastructure out of the company in many instances. So our research is on whether people have learned the lessons of the past, and if they are building security into the cloud computing environment. Unfortunately, we found out that they are not doing this as they should.

What are some the recommendations from the Security for Business Innovation Council in terms of what companies should be doing to enable cloud computing? The first recommendation is that if you are thinking of outsourcing applications and information and infrastructure then you ought to rein in the protection environment. See if there is a way to lessen the cost of security. Look at the kind of security measures you have, check them for cost effectiveness and see if there are redundancies.

[Another] recommendation is to proactively embrace new technologies on your own. The job of the security guy is not to be "Doctor No." It's not to say "you can't do stuff," but rather how you can embrace these technologies and how you can do it securely. You can never do security perfectly, but if you do it in the context of risk, you can minimize your exposure.

It also makes sense if you no longer have control of the physical infrastructure to shift from protecting the container to protecting the data. One would assume that the cloud provider is protecting the container and the physical infrastructure. Your job then is to shift from protecting the container to protecting the data and information itself. Once you go to a cloud environment, it really is about how you maximize the use of your applications and your information and how you ensure that the people who need it get access to it.

[Another recommendation] is really about protecting data with security techniques that allow you to monitor the flow of data in real time. Things like data-leak prevention technologies that are far more dynamic and are based more on content and behavior and looking for anomalies based on who is getting access, or who is using the data and how it is being used.

What impact has the recession had on information security budgets? Have they been as immune from cuts as some had expected them to be? Every budget has been impacted. There's no question about that. Relative to others though, security budgets have been impacted less. In our case we are gaining market share.

This year we had 10% year-over-year growth in Q1 and actually almost 11% from an order standpoint. Now that is down from last year, but it is still positive growth. I think a lot of high-technology companies would have been thrilled to report growth in Q1. If you were to look at our product lines, SecurID which is still a very significant portion of our business, is only flat to maybe slightly up and that would be expected because it is so employment dependent. We are not getting expansion inside existing accounts because people aren't adding lots of employees. Our security incident management business is growing at well over 30%, while our ID protection and verification suite is growing at about 40%, and our data leak prevention is growing at 80% or 90%.

Two years ago you had said that standalone security vendors are headed for extinction because vendors such as Microsoft, EMC and Cisco Systemd were integrating security functions into their own products. Do you still believe that will happen? I was wrong on time but not on direction. There really are only two significantly large independent companies that are totally security focused today, and that's McAfee and CheckPoint and they are anomalies.

Symantec now owns Veritas so they are as much an infrastructure company as they are a security company. And let's pick a category like data leak prevention. The three big players in that space - IronPort, Tablus and Vontu were all snapped up.

There continue to be innovative startups and lots of point products, but increasingly, especially in cloud environments, the ability [of customers] to absorb countless numbers of independent point products tends to be less and less. We see customers wanting to minimize the amount of vendors they have because the technology really needs to be baked in. It needs to be transparent and seamless in the environment. I'm not saying there won't be security products. But I am saying the infrastructure companies are going to need their own security products and technologies and will form partnerships as we are doing with the likes of Microsoft and Cisco.

What do you think about President Obama's plans to appoint a White House cybersecurity coordinator? I think it makes tremendous sense. I think the idea of having somebody coordinate policy and to lobby strongly on Capitol Hill for the requisite funding and changes to law is a good one and I think it is very necessary.