Ryan Clothier

VMware's third-quarter profit dropped by more than half as the company invested more heavily in research and development, though its revenue increased 4 percent from a year earlier, the company said Wednesday. Including one-time items, the company made a profit of $95 million, or $0.24 per share, better than the $0.20 per share analysts had been expecting, according to Thomson Reuters. Net income for the quarter ended Sept. 30 was US$38 million, or $0.09 per share, down from $83 million, or $0.21 per share, in the third quarter of 2008, VMware said.

Revenue for the quarter was $490 million, up from $472 million for the same period last year. The economy remains challenging but VMware now has better visibility into the coming quarters, Chief Financial Officer Mark Peek said in a statement. Analysts had been expecting $474 million in revenue, Thomson Reuters said. He forecast fourth-quarter revenue of $540 million to $560 million, ahead of current estimates, but said revenue in the first quarter next year is likely to be down sequentially. Sales and marketing expenses also climbed, as the company continued to promote a new version of its virtualization software, vSphere 4. "Our solid third-quarter results were driven by strength in the U.S. federal sector, increased transaction volumes and particularly robust growth in our maintenance renewals," Peek said in the statement. VMware spent $133.5 million on R&D during the quarter, up from $85 million in the same period last year.

A 1 percent drop in revenue from the U.S. was more than offset by a 9 percent increase in international sales, VMware said. Services revenue, which includes maintenance fees and professional services, climbed 33 percent to $249 million, while revenue from new software licenses declined 16 percent to $240 million.

The European Union should update its laws to better suit cloud computing, Microsoft's top lawyer urged in Brussels Tuesday. The existing E.U. laws "are starting to show their age," he told students, E.U. officials and industry executives. Laws covering data protection and data retention go back to the mid-1990s and need to be revised to take into account the massive and constant flow of data between users' computers and multiple cloud servers that can be located anywhere in the world, Microsoft head legal counsel Brad Smith said in a speech.

The data retention law passed in 2006, when cloud computing was mostly limited to online e-mail accounts, calls on the 27 E.U. member states to each set their own length of time for the retention of data, between six and 24 months. A request to access the information can be done only with a court order. Under the directive authorities can request access to details such as IP address and time of use of every e-mail, phone call and text message sent or received. Smith said countries have chosen widely varying retention times. The discrepancy makes compliance by telecom and cloud services companies complicated, Smith said. A subscriber to cloud services in, say, Italy, with a relatively short data retention regime, may see their data stored in Ireland, with one of the longest retention times.

He urged the E.U. to change the law, either by setting a standard length for retention time, such as a year for all E.U. member states, or by applying mutual recognition principles, so that each country applies the retention time of the country where the user's data is being stored. In the cloud it is constantly moving," he said. Greater harmonization is needed in the 1995 data protection directive too, Smith said. "At the time it was passed, data moved location occasionally. While technology and its uses have moved on since 1995, the importance of privacy hasn't changed, Smith said. I disagree. And in a thinly veiled attack on Microsoft rival Google, he added: "Some firms based on the West Coast (of the U.S.) don't think privacy is so important.

The right to privacy is the right to choose who sees your information and it is as important now as it was 15 years ago."Data transfers are global, and while Smith acknowledged that a global data protection treaty is unlikely in the near future, he suggested that trading partners including the U.S. and E.U. should try to forge an agreement similar to the bilateral free trade agreements they both sign up to in other commercial fields. For wireless connections, he urged the E.U. to free up more radio spectrum for services that run in the cloud. His final piece of advice for E.U. lawmakers concerned broadband access to the Internet – a prerequisite if cloud computing is to take off in the way many people predict it will in the coming years."Governments need to consider how to enhance broadband, both wired and wireless," Smith said.

Verizon mocks AT&T for whining in its response to lawsuit. Tony Bradley Was this article useful? Verizon's legal filing says "the truth hurts" and claims AT&T is simply trying to squash the marketing before the holidays. Yes 76 No 1 Verizon has responded to the AT&T lawsuit over the "There's a Map for That" marketing campaign with a legal filing of its own.

Legal briefs and filings don't usually make very compelling reading, but this one is actually a pretty good read. Verizon's message to the court and to AT&T essentially boils down to three words: "the truth hurts". Verizon responds to AT&T lawsuit by stating 'the truth hurts'The Verizon legal team should be commended. It has a little drama, a little humor, and ultimately makes the point that AT&T is simply trying to use the courts to obscure the simple truth that its 3G network is inadequate. AT&T may not like the message that the ads send, but this Court should reject its efforts to silence the messenger." The legal response from Verizon concludes by saying "This motion is a blatant effort to ask the Court to do what the marketplace will not do: shield AT&T from truthful comparative advertisements that Verizon has a right to air and that consumers have a right to see." Touché. Well-played, Verizon. In the filing, Verizon states "Remarkably, AT&T admits that the 3G coverage maps-the one thing that is common to all five ads-are accurate and that the ads' express statement that Verizon has "5X More 3G Coverage" than AT&T is true." Verizon goes on to say "In the final analysis, AT&T seeks emergency relief because Verizon's side-by-side, apples-to-apples comparison of its own 3G coverage with AT&T's confirms what the marketplace has been saying for months: AT&T failed to invest adequately in the necessary infrastructure to expand its 3G coverage to support its growth in smartphone business and the usefulness of its service to smartphone users has suffered accordingly. Recent reports from Brandindex.com show that Verizon's brand image is skyrocketing, while AT&T's has plummeted.

Or, perhaps AT&T's claim has become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy. AT&T could construe the reports to support its claim that the ads are misleading and damaging to its image. By suing Verizon and making a big deal over the ad campaign, AT&T has increased the exposure of the ads exponentially. The fact that AT&T is whining about it publicly certainly doesn't improve its brand perception either. If the shift in brand perception is a result of the ads, it could be because they're true rather than because they're misleading. AT&T was hoping to get an emergency injunction to force Verizon to pull the entire marketing campaign pending the results of a full hearing.

Even if AT&T ultimately prevails, the holidays will be over, the damage will be done, and Verizon will most likely have ended the campaign of its own volition anyway. It appears that AT&T will not get that injunction and that this case will not be heard for awhile. Verizon isn't making any claim in the ads that AT&T's own customers haven't already stated. I doubt AT&T will be taking its customers to court to get them to stop complaining. Consumers have taken issue with AT&T's high dropped call rate in some areas, sparse 3G coverage, and more.

AT&T is its own worst enemy in this case. Seems like a lose-lose and makes me wonder if the AT&T legal team isn't secretly working for the Verizon marketing team. It is drawing attention to disparaging details about its own network which it admits are accurate, and coming off looking like whiners at the same time.

IT professionals looking to boost their high-tech careers in the coming five years are betting on security certifications and skills to help them stand out to potential employees, according to a new survey. Separately, nearly 20% indicated they would seek ethical hacking certification over the same time period. Five ways to get affordable certification skillsSome IT skills see pay hikes during the downturn CompTIA, an IT industry trade association, polled some 1,537 high-tech workers and found 37% intend to pursue a security certification over the next five years.

And another 13% pinpointed forensics as the next certification goal in their career development. "When you add the results, you will see that about two-thirds of IT workers intend to add some type of security certification to their portfolio," says Terry Erdle, senior vice president of skills certifications. "This trend is driven by two factors: one, security issues are pervasive, and two, more and more people are moving to managed services and software-as-a-service models, which involves more complex networking. Nearly 90% said they want to spruce up their resumes and another 88% said they hope to grow personally with new certifications. That level of non-enterprise data center computing has people look more closely at their security infrastructure." High-tech workers surveyed cited economic advancement and personal growth as the motivation to seek further certifications. Emerging technologies and vertical industry trends also drive certifications seekers. Green IT, mobile and healthcare IT also placed among high-tech career development plans. "We are going to see upwards of 70,000 IT jobs in healthcare and the related network and storage skills that come with electronic records, such as e-reporting and e-charting," Erdle adds. "We are working now to determine what kind of IT roles should be supported in certifications from CompTIA." Do you Tweet? For instance, SaaS ranked among the technologies in which IT workers intend to seek certifications in the coming years.

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Cisco this week enhanced its IPv6 offerings for its carrier core and edge routers in an effort to ease the eventual migration from IPv4. The Carrier-Grade IP Version 6 Solution line includes a new hardware module for Cisco's CRS-1 router, and software for that system as well as for the ASR 9000 edge router. By 2015, there will be 15 billion IP endpoints on the Internet. Cisco also unveiled professional services offerings to assist customers in the transition from IPv4 to IPv6. The evolution of the Internet Cisco says there are 700 days left until the last block of IPv4 addresses are allocated. The IPv6 enhancements rolled out this week are intended to provide a bridge from IPv4 to full IPv6 network while at the same time preserving existing IPv4 addresses to ease the migration.

IPv6 has 340 undecillion unique addresses - or more than 50 billion billion billion - for each person on earth, more than enough to continue to support the demand for IP addresses, Cisco says. IPv4 has a finite set of unique addresses, numbering approximately 4 billion, which is rapidly depleting due to the growth of Internet-connected devices and smart devices. However, the protocols of IPv4 and IPv6 are not directly compatible, so migrating a network from IPv4 to IPv6 requires preservation of IPv4 while orchestrating a gradual and prudent transition to IPv6. This has been a chief reason why the industry has been procrastinating on this migration even though IPv6 was developed a decade ago. It's probably something to take seriously two to five years from now but (carriers) have to start to prepare." With that, Cisco unveiled the Carrier-Grade Services Engine for the CRS-1. Deployed deep in the core of service provider's network, this module supports large-scale, high-throughput network-address translation (NAT). At the edge, Cisco rolled out Carrier-Grade IPv6 Solution for its ASR series routers. But with IPv4 addresses facing imminent depletion, the time may have come to accelerate the adoption of IPv6. "I do think we've reached the point where we should be concerned about it," says Glen Hunt, an analyst at Current Analysis. "The biggets problem might be that we've been crying wolf about IPv6 and defining ways to get around attacking the problem. This is software that helps enable NAT at the edge of a network for smaller or distributed IP networks.

These are professional services designed to make the transition to IPv6 smooth and reduce the risk to network operations. The software is intended to first tunnel IPv6 addresses through IPv4; and then perform the inverse function as IPv6 addresses outnumber IPv4. Lastly, Cisco is offering services for the Carrier-Grade IPv6 Solution implementation. The services include initial planning and IPv6 readiness assessment to design and implementation. All products will be available in early 2010. Cisco did not disclose pricing.

A look back at the week's biggest Google-related news stories:   Google, Verizon unite on Android devices  Verizon and Google have entered into an agreement to jointly develop wireless devices based on Google's open source Android mobile platform. Verizon says that it will have two Android-based handsets on the market by year-end with more to come by 2010   Google celebrates anniversary of bar code patent  Google's "doodle" on its search home page Wednesday was a bar code that presumably translated into the word "Google". It also said happy 57th anniversary to the awarding of a patent for the bar code by Joseph Woodland and Bernard Silver. During a teleconference Tuesday, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam and Google CEO Eric Schmidt outlined the companies' new strategic partnership that will see them working together to develop Android-based smartphones, PDAs and netbooks, and to deliver users with applications sold through the Android Market app store. It also coincided with the announcement earlier this week of the Nobel Prize for Physics to Charles Kao for his work on fiber-optic communications and Willard Boyle and George Smith, who invented imaging technology using a digital sensor dubbed a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device). The CCD has enabled developments such as bar codes/bar code readers to come along.   Gmail, other webmail passwords stolen  In the wake of the posting in online forums of stolen account and password information for thousands of Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo e-mail accounts, evidence emerged of yet more abuse that entails attackers exploiting that information to hack into compromised accounts over the last few days to send spam aimed at stealing credit cards.

Attackers have been taking advantage of the exposed account information for Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo to break into the victim's e-mail accounts and send out deceptive messages to the victim's contacts to promote the scam.   Google Voice in the middle of things AT&T buoyed the spirits of Google Voice fans this week by saying it would allow the application to run on its network, but later in the week word emerged that lawmakers want the FCC to look into whether Google Voice blocks calls to people in rural areas because they are expensive to connect. According to Patrik Runald, senior manager security research at Websense, the security firm noticed about a 40% surge in spam related to Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail accounts in recent days, with some of the spam being a phishing scam related to a fake Chinese electronics shopping site. And guess which big carrier is encouraging the lawmakers in this pursuit?   Google Squared freshens up  PC World's David Coursey writes that "Google Squared, the ambitious project that delivers search results as a table, has received an update that improves both the quality and quantity of the information it presents." He cites a post on Google's blog that the update results will allow up to four times as many facts to be squeezed into a square.   Google, Microsoft woo Twitter  Various reports (All Things Digital, Reuters, etc.) had Google and Microsoft chatting with Twitter separately about how to best integrate Twitter with outside search engines.   Google: DRAM, DRAM, DRAM!  Computerworld reports that Google and the University of Toronto released a study of tens of thousands of Google servers showing 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." For more on Google, visit Network World's independent Google community, Google Subnet.

Sophos has added data-loss prevention capabilities to its desktop anti-malware software, the security firm says, promising gateway-based DLP in the future as well. Rainer Gawlick, chief marketing officer for Sophos, says the desktop DLP technology is designed to monitor for sensitive content a user might transmit via e-mail, Web uploads, USB sticks or DVDs, and block it if need be. "We're using the existing agent to scan malware and for confidential information," he says, noting for existing Sophos endpoint-security customers, the DLP technology is a free upgrade. 11 security companies to watch Many DLP systems today cost hundreds of thousands of dollars; however Sophos doesn't claim the DLP functionality it packed into Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9 is the same found in high-end endpoint/gateway DLP products. Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9 combines a fully-integrated desktop agent for DLP and malware protection in a single product. For instance, the Sophos product doesn't have a DLP discovery tool, and it basically works by focusing on personally-identifiable data such as credit-card and driver's license numbers.

DLP is a scanning problem. But it allows for the creation of customized rules in order to identify and catch file data through discrete triggers, such as project codes, that could be added to documents as identifiers. "There's pressure increasing on customers every day to protect data," Gawlick says. "What we're doing is making DLP implementable. We're using the existing agent to scan for malware and scan for confidential information." Some organizations may find they do need more sophisticated DLP, Gawlick says, but others may find what Sophos has come up with to be "practical DLP" that makes it hard for people to violate content-protection policies. Raymond had been using another standalone DLP product he declined to name, noting there had been minor interference at times among separate agent software. John Raymond, IT security manager at Sacramento-based SAFE Credit Union, has long used Sophos anti-malware software in his organization, and for the past two months has been beta-testing the DLP features in Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9. The single-agent DLP/anti-malware software from Sophos appears to have less of a software footprint and uses less CPU resources than having a separate DLP and anti-malware agent, he says.

While the other DLP agent made use of a type of fingerprinting technology that might be more accurate than the Sophos DLP, so far it appears that the Sophos technology is going to be sufficient to protect sensitive customer data. "I think it's going to be accurate enough for what we need," Raymond says, adding that the firm also has other gateway means to monitor for unauthorized transmissions. Administrators can be kept apprised of DLP actions via the same management console used to watch for malware events. According to Gawlick, Sophos DLP on the desktop can be used to block, allow or notify a user of violations of policy. "You can use it to simply warn the user," Gawlick says, by telling them if the file is sent, that transmission will be logged into the management console. Although Sophos DLP doesn't support FTP now, subsequent editions will, and Sophos also plans a gateway-based product by the end of the year that would work with the same set of DLP rules. Sophos Endpoint Security and Data Protection 9, available now, starts at $34.25 per user for 500 users.

Intel Corp. is honing its sights on many-core chips that are far more powerful than today's dual and quad-core processors. Intel also noted that the experimental chip uses the same amount of energy as two household light bulbs. As expected, Intel took a big step in that direction today by unveiling a 48-core research chip that it says is 10 to 20 times more powerful than current the top end offering in its multi-core Core line of processors. With its eye on the data center and the cloud, Intel built fully functional cores in the new chip as part of what it calls its "terascale" mission. "With a chip like this, you could imagine a cloud data center of the future which will be an order of magnitude more energy efficient than what exists today, saving significant resources on space and power costs," said Justin Rattner , Intel CTO and head of Intel Labs. "Over time, I expect these advanced concepts to find their way into mainstream devices, just as advanced automotive technology such as electronic engine control, air bags and anti-lock braking eventually found their way into all cars." Today's unveiling of the 48-core research chip comes about two years after Intel showed off an experimental 80-core chip.

The 80-cores were not fully functional, however, and the chip was used mainly to study ways to make a large number of cores communicate efficiently with each other, as well as help Intel engineers find new architectural and core designs. That research chip had teraflop performance capabilities but used less energy than a quad-core processor. At the time, Intel officials said that the company was five to eight years away from building a fully functional, commercial-ready 80-core chip. Intel reported today that it is bringing academics and experts from other high tech firms into the loop by distributing 100 of the experimental 48-core chips so researchers can work on programming models and on developing software that can run on such a high number of cores. In an interview with Computerworld last month, Rattner said that schedule has changed and that engineers are even closer to developing such a chip. The chip maker, which is slated to unveil six- and eight-core Nehalem chips next year, also noted that it expects to integrate key features of the research chip into a new Core line of commercially available processors by early 2010. "This is an indication that Intel can deliver on its multi-core strategy," said Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group. "It's very important in that it helps validate what Intel contends can be done and it adds credibility to their roadmap.

This one is more of a prototype - less flashy but more functional. The 80-core chip was more for bragging rights and was more of a science experiment. It is all part of the process of bringing something new to market." Intel reported that the 48-core chip is designed with a high-speed, on-chip network for sharing information, along with newly invented power management techniques that allow it to operate at as little as 25 watts, or at 125 watts when running at maximum performance. Dan Olds, an analyst at The Gabriel Consulting Group, said the new research chip is an important step in the process of building many-core processors, but Intel should release more details about the technology. "This is a fairly important step in the evolution of computer processors," said Olds. "Multi-core chips have become the standard with dual-core and quad-core chips used in almost every system. The company dubbed the experimental chip as a "single-chip cloud computer" because its architecture resembles that of a cloud computing datacenters.

Core counts will definitely increase over time, but it's happened in small steps - two to four cores, four to six cores and with eight and 10 cores coming in the next few years. This is important in that it determines if existing software will be able to run on it without being ported. This 48-core chip from Intel is important from a proof-of-concept perspective." But Olds said that Intel should explain what 48 "fully functional" really means. "We need more information from Intel in order to understand just how big a leap forward this chip really is," he added. "For example, can it handle the standard x64 instruction set? But we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. It's an important science project, one that might be giving important industry stakeholders a usable piece of the future, but still a science project." Enderle added that such research is critical for the whole cloud computing movement. "This technology is a requirement if the concept of cloud computing is ever to reach its potential for cost savings and energy efficiency," he said. "Without it, much of what we imagine with the massively flexible and utility like concept of cloud computing simply won't be possible. At a volume of only 100 units, this is more of a science project than an actual prototype.

This is a very important milestone for the future."

As NASA's space shuttle Atlantis astronauts blasted into space this afternoon, the last thing on their minds was wondering what's for dinner. But once on in orbit it wouldn't be that unusual to find spare ribs for supper. Rather Atlantis astronauts' main focus is delivering over 27,000lbs of spare parts to the International Space Station.

According to NASA shuttle astronauts "have an astonishing array of food items to choose from." NASA says each astronaut is allowed a "bonus food allotment" to bring some of the comforts of home to outer space. You may recall that in 2007, an astronaut was trying to make a pretend sushi meal with bag-packaged salmon and accidentally squirted a blob of spicy wasabi into the air. NetworkWorld Extra:10 NASA space technologies that may never see the cosmos Last year for example the International Space Station received its first crab meat delivery courtesy of NASA. Miller's Select crab meat flew onboard NASA's shuttle mission STS119. Food can represent a peculiar threat to space life. After a lengthy cleanup, the wasabi was exiled to a cargo bay. Salt and pepper are available but only in a liquid form because astronauts can't sprinkle salt and pepper on their food in space - it would simply float away. On the Space Shuttle, condiments are provided such as ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise.

There is a danger ketchup, salt and pepper or other favorites could clog air vents, contaminate equipment or get stuck in an astronaut's eyes, mouth or nose, NASA's Space Food Website says. And this article notes "NASA's food laboratory carefully balances diets between six categories: beverage, rehydratable, intermediate moisture, thermostabilized, irradiated, and natural form." Astronaut Don Pettit brought along small cans of green chilies on one Space shuttle trip. Despite its "threat" to the astronaut, spicy foods are popular in space because most of the food is dried in one form or another and zero gravity does nothing good for sinuses or flavor. On a previous mission, taco sauce had become carefully guarded currency. The taco sauce, he said, also could be used for barter. "If it was your turn to say, clean the latrine, you could trade for two packets of taco sauce," he said. Astronaut Sid Gutierrez once said space shuttle crews always take spicy accouterments like taco sauce to make food taste better.

Some packaging actually prevents food from flying away - always a major concern. Space food however isn't reserved to astronauts thanks to a cook book out this week will tell you everything you wanted to know about cooking and eating in space. This is the reason tortillas are taken along on the flight rather than bread - tortillas make far less crumbs than bread and crumbs are bad because they can potentially float around and get stuck in filters or an astronaut's eye, NASA says. The Astronaut's Cookbook - Tales, Recipes, and More - penned by NASA veterans Charles Bourland and Gregory Vogt offers up a number of recipes as well a history of space feasting just in time for Thanksgiving, if you are so inclined. The book includes astronaut home favorite recipes and NASA quarantine food recipes. The book includes a number of interesting space food facts:-Soviet cosmonaut, Gherman Titov, was the first human to consume food in space-John Glenn, Jr., was the first American to consume food in space-One astronaut wanted Georgia BBQ in space.

Celebrity chefs Rachael Ray and Emeril Lagasse contributed recipes to the NASA space program, and their recipes are featured in the book. Bourland spent 30 years at the NASA Johnson Space Center developing food and food packages for spaceflight. Recipes in the book are extracted from the NASA food specifications and modified for regular, earth-bound kitchens. Vogt is a veteran writer, science consultant, and developer of science and technology materials for schools.

In its search for water on the moon, NASA slammed not one, but two, spacecraft into a deep, dark crater on the lunar south pole this morning. NASA successfully nailed a target about 230,000 miles from Earth - twice. It was a precision operation. The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS, separated into two sections last night.

Four minutes later, the rest of the space probe shot through the miles-high plume of debris kicked up by the first impact, grabbed analysis of the matter, and then it too crashed into the lunar surface. Its empty rocket hull, weighing in at more than 2 tons, was the first of the two pieces to slam into the lunar surface at 7:31 a.m. EDT today. Effectively, it was a one-two punch designed to kick up what scientists believe is water ice hiding in the bottom of a permanently dark crater. NASA said it will issue a report on its initial analysis of the probe at10 a.m. EDT today. With NASA still hopeful to one day create a viable human outpost on the moon , it would be helpful for anyone there to find water rather than haul it up from Earth.

NASA had been promising live images of the impact and resulting debris plume but the live images on NASA TV disappeared moments before impact. The orbiter is expected to send its own analysis of the debris plume back to earth later this morning. The LCROSS spacecraft, which blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on June 18, went aloft with its companion satellite, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter . As the Atlas V rocket carrying lifted off, a NASA spokesman called it "NASA's first step in a lasting return to the moon." NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter , which has been in orbit around the moon since late June, was 50 kilometers above the moon's surface during this morning's impact. The LCROSS spacecraft heavily loaded with scientific gear. The instruments were selected to provide mission scientists with multiple views of the debris created by the hull's initial impact.

According to NASA, its payload consisted of two near-infrared spectrometers, a visible light spectrometer, two mid-infrared cameras, two near-infrared cameras, a visible camera and a visible radiometer. Before it crashed into the moon, LCROSS was transmitting data back to NASA mission control at 1.5 Mbps, NASA noted this morning.

Start-up Avere Systems has unveiled a tiered network-attached storage product that automatically moves data among four different types of storage to improve performance and minimize wasted disk space. You don't have to set policies. Avere's FXT Series NAS products combine SAS, RAM, SSD and SATA drives into one centrally managed system. "We do tiering on the fly," says Avere co-founder and CEO Ron Bianchini. "It's 100% automatic. We look at the blocks as they're moving between the application and storage server and we determine where they go based on access frequency and data characteristics." Nine data storage companies to watch  One challenge facing customers is that disk drive capacity has been growing faster than performance, forcing them to buy more storage than they need to get the required performance, Bianchini says.

The FXT Series uses RAM for small reads and writes; SSD and SAS for large random reads and writes; and SAS drives for large sequential reads and writes. Utilization rates can be improved by intelligently moving data across different tiers based on changing needs, he says. Archival needs are handled by SATA drives. The customer's normal backup and mirroring processes stay the same, Bianchini says. The FXT system itself includes the RAM, SSD and SAS. Customers buy SATA drives separately, and it all gets managed by the Avere software. Avere was founded in January 2008 and is led by Bianchini, a former senior vice president at NetApp and co-founder of Spinnaker Networks, a storage grid company acquired by NetApp.

List pricing for FXT starts at $52,500. The appliances are available in a 2U form factor and each one features 64GB of DRAM and 1GB of solid-state disk. Avere is backed by $15 million in venture funding from Menlo Ventures and Norwest Venture Partners. One of the appliances includes 1.2TB of SAS disks and the other includes 3.6TB of SAS.

Hackers have apparently found a way to automate the creation of new Facebook profiles by breaking the challenge-response mechanism used by the site to ensure that only humans sign up for the service. The pages are being used to spam links pointing to malicious sites. Security researcher Roger Thompson, of AVG Technologies, today said his company in recent days discovered numerous Facebook pages that were clearly created in an automated fashion using malware programs. Users who click on the link are prompted to install rogue anti-spyware tools on their systems, he said.

All of the pages contain the same profile picture but with different user names. So far, AVG has noticed a "couple of hundred" Facebook pages that appear to have been created by an automated malware program. From a security threat standpoint, the Facebook break-in doesn't appear to be particularly serious, Thompson said in his blog. Simon Axten, a Facebook spokesman, said the company is investigating the report and is working on identifying the fake accounts "so we can disable them en masse." In an e-mail message, Axten said that the URL contained in the profiles has already been blacklisted by major Web browsers and have been blocked from being shared on Facebook. And Facebook is sure to deactivate all the new accounts "as quickly as they find them." Even so, the fact that hackers got past Facebook's Captchas highlights a continuing trend by attackers to try and exploit social networks, he said. The company is using a third-party Captcha company called reCAPTCHA, which was recently acquired by Google and "is about as well-regarded a Captcha provider as there is," he said.

Another possibility is that those responsible for the attack farmed out the Captchas to be solved by humans for a price. "On the education front, we encourage users not to click on strange links and to take appropriate steps if they feel their computer or Facebook account has been compromised," he said. Facebook is trying to understand how the new accounts were created, though it is possible that the sign-up process was manual. In a note posted today , the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which is a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, warned about the trend. According to the IC3, fraudsters are using spam to promote phishing sites or to entice users to download an application or view a video. Fraudsters are continuing to hijack attacks on social networking sites and are using them to spread malicious software, the IC3 warned.

Users visiting such sites or clicking on the videos and photos then get infected by various pieces of malware. Adjusting Web site privacy settings, being selective about friends and what they are allowed to view and disabling options such as texting and photo sharing when they are not being used are all ways users can protect themselves on social networking sites, it said. Often the spam is disguised to appear as if it were sent from a user's 'friend.' Some attackers also plant malicious ads containing malware downloads on social network sites, the IC3 note warned Users of social networking sites need to be aware of such threats and take measures to address them, the IC3 said.

Tens of thousands of customers of Heartland Payment Systems are finding themselves caught in the middle of an escalating war between the payment processing vendor and point-of-sale terminal vendor VeriFone Inc. The dispute is threatening to push back industry efforts to implement new encryption technology for protecting credit and debit card data. Both companies are angrily accusing each other of a litany of misdeeds and have filed a total of four lawsuits in three courts over the past two months.

It has also left thousands of merchants in serious doubt about the quality of support they will receive for their point-of-sale (PoS) systems over the next few months. The technology is designed to enable merchants to encrypt card data from the moment a card is swiped at a payment terminal to the point where it comes to rest at the card issuing bank. At the center of the dispute is an end-to-end encryption technology called E3 that is being developed by Heartland to protect credit and debit card data flowing over transaction-processing networks. Besides offering E3 to other PoS vendors, Heartland is planning on manufacturing its own terminals featuring E3 technology. It's the first major end-to-end encryption effort in the industry.

Heartland launched the encryption effort in the wake of the disastrous systems intrusion last year that exposed data on more than 100 million credit and debit cards. The Princeton, N.J.-based Heartland is one of the largest payment card processors in the country with more than 250,000 merchants using its transaction processing services. Heartland claims that less than 50% of its customers user VeriFone terminals. Of those, about 175,000 merchants use VeriFone's payment terminals. VeriFone sued Heartland in September, claiming infringement of VeriFone's technology in building E3. VeriFone claimed that Heartland was gearing up to be a competitor by manufacturing its own PoS terminals featuring the E3 technology.

In the weeks since filing the lawsuit, VeriFone has mounted a vigorous communication campaign warning Heartland customers about the potential disruptions they could face if they fail to register with VeriFone by Dec. 31. In statements posted on its Web site, press releases and court filings, VeriFone has questioned Heartland's ability to continue supporting VeriFone terminals after Dec. 31. Verifone has also filed a second lawsuit seeking damages for patent infringement. "If Heartland were to be cut from any support, its customers would be forced to reach out directly to VeriFone," a VeriFone spokesman said today in an e-mail. VeriFone said it will discontinue support of all its terminals used by Heartland's customers after Dec. 31 unless each merchant registers separately for free service with the company by then. After Dec. 31, Heartland merchants who do not make other arrangements have no assurance of software updates, troubleshooting or other intervention by VeriFone, the spokesman said. "Heartland certainly cannot by itself update and maintain VeriFone code and to claim otherwise is ludicrous," he said. In a lengthy open letter posted on the company's Web site a few weeks ago Heartland CEO Robert Carr claimed that VeriFone didn't want Heartland to work with other manufacturers to produce E3 terminals and instead wanted to be the sole E3 terminal provider. In a countersuit, Heartland said VeriFone brought the lawsuit only because Heartland wanted to work with other manufacturers - and not just Verifone - to produce E3 terminals. Carr has also accused VeriFone of wanting to "line its own pockets" by seeking to charge merchants an unnecessary fee for implementing E3 technology on VeriFone's payment systems.

In a second lawsuit filed this month, Heartland accused VeriFone of "false claims" and "unethical attempts" to scare customers over service and support issues. Heartland insists that it can support all of its customers who are using VeriFone payment terminals. Carr has also maintained that VeriFone's real reason in getting merchants to sign up for the free support is so that it can compile a customer list which it then plans on giving to Heartland's rivals in return for their business. Carr insisted that the company has the parts, the inventory and alternative sources of supply to continuing support merchants using VeriFone terminals. Speaking with Computerworld today, Carr bluntly accused VeriFone of "lying." VeriFone's claim that Heartland would be unable to support merchants using VeriFone's terminals, is a deliberate distortion of the facts, he said. We don t need their software, we don t need VeriFone at all, Carr said.

Considering how the effort was touted as the "next big thing in the industry, it is a little disheartening to see that there can't be more cooperation," between Heartland and VeriFone, Bokor said. The dispute is likely to having a chilling effect on end-to-end encryption attempts in the payment industry, said Andy Bokor, chief operating officer of Trustwave, a Chicago-based company that conducts security and compliance testing for some of the largest merchants in the country. "Many of us in the payment industry were curious to see how Heartland's end-to-end encryption would work," Bokor said. The dispute highlights the need for payment processors and vendors of PoS systems to work together to implement any kind of end-to-end encryption, he said. Many merchants are hesitant to implement the technology because it offers them no immediate benefit from a compliance standpoint, Litan said. Avivah Litan, an analyst with market research firm Gartner Inc., said the lawsuits will only serve to further confuse merchants about end-to-end encryption efforts. The dispute will only serve to further "stifle efforts and movement in this area" she said. "For now, the main parties that are interested in this technology are the payment processors and terminal manufacturers that are trying to sell it to their clients in order to increase their revenues. "

The U.K. government said Monday it plans to push for a law requiring service providers such as ISPs to retain data about instant messages, e-mail and other electronic communications. Showing the deep concerns about privacy among the British public, some 90 respondents out of 221 did not answer the questions on the basis that they were opposed to any kind of surveillance imposed by the government. The government argues that knowing the participants, timing and method of a communication - but not its contents - is vital in protecting the public from serious crime and terrorism. "It is a highly technical area and one which demands a fine balance between privacy and maintaining the capabilities of the police and security services," according to a statement attributed to David Hanson, minister of state for security, counter-terrorism, crime and policing. "We will now work with communications service providers and others to develop these proposals and aim to introduce necessary legislation as soon as possible." The government formulated its position after it asked public authorities, private companies and the public for their views on how communications data should be collected, under what authority and how it should be stored. Under the plan, the government would require service providers to retain all communications data, even that related to third-party services which are accessed using their networks.

Under that directive, data must be retained for 12 months. "This is a 'third-party' relationship, and the company providing the broadband access has no responsibility under the DRD to retain third-party data," according to the government's response to the consultation. The government says that existing European Union legislation - the E.U. Data Retention Directive - does not go far enough and only covers the services provided by the network provider. The data collected would be stored by the service providers and not in a central database. Government authorities would be able to request data under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of 2000, which mandates rules for accessing communications data. It hasn't been determined how long service providers would be required to hold the data.

It is expected service providers would have to spend as much as £2 billion (US$3.34 billion) to implement technology to comply with a new law requiring data to be retained. "The government will work with communications service providers to develop solutions which minimize the potential disruption to their business," the government statement said. There isn't a fixed date for the next general election but it must take place before June 3, 2010, according to the Electoral Commission. The Labour government's data retention plan, however, could potentially be disrupted by an election. The Conservative Party is expected to pose a strong challenge to Labour, which has been in power for 13 years.

Barracuda Networks has acquired start-up Purewire in an effort to expand its footprint in the market for Web security services. Barracuda Networks, which offers content-security appliances to guard against threats involving e-mail, Web and instant messaging, says the acquisition of Purewire will allow it to expand into the Web security software-as-a-service (SaaS) market. Hottest tech M&A deals of 2009 Launched last year, Purewire offers a managed security service to detect and block malware. Purewire's co-founders will assume management positions at Barracuda.

CTO Paul Judge will become vice president of cloud services and chief research officer. Mike Van Bruinisse, Purewire's CEO, will join Barracuda as vice president of enterprise sales. Judge will be in charge of combining the Purewire and Barracuda Labs research teams to identify and track threats, says Dean Drako, president and CEO of Barracuda, based in Campbell, Calif. Today about 85,000 organizations make use of Barracuda's security products. Current plans call for Purewire to remain in Atlanta. "We have need for more senior management," Drako says, adding that Purewire's co-founders have done a great job developing a new platform at the start-up and have considerable industry experience. "Under their leadership, Purewire has helped to shape the Web security SaaS market in a very short period of time," Drako says.

Some customers deploy the appliances on their own, and others opt to use them in conjunction with cloud-based services, including backup services. Drako also notes that the Purewire service should benefit from Barracuda's extensive sales and marketing group. The addition of Purewire promises to expand Barracuda's services portfolio. The companies did not disclose the value of the deal.

Microsoft today confirmed that exploit code published last week can compromise PCs running older versions of Internet Explorer (IE), but said its security team has not yet seen any in-the-wild attacks. IE6 and IE7 account for more than 41% of all browsers used worldwide, according to the most recent data from metrics firm Net Applications. The attack code, which was posted Friday to the Bugtraq security mailing list , affects both Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) and the newer IE7, Microsoft acknowledged. "Microsoft can confirm that the publicly available exploit code affects IE6 and IE7, not IE8," a company spokesman said in an e-mail reply to questions today.

IE8, meanwhile, has an 18.1% market share. According to Danish vulnerability tracking vendor Secunia, the flaw is in IE's layout parser , and could be exploited by hackers to hijack fully-patched Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) machines. Over the weekend , Symantec researchers took note of the exploit code, but said that it was shaky. "The exploit currently exhibits signs of poor reliability, but we expect that a fully-functional reliable exploit will be available in the near future," the security company's analysis team said in an entry on a company blog Saturday. Secunia rated the vulnerability as "highly critical," its second-highest threat ranking. Windows Vista, for example, ships with IE7. Windows 7, however, relies on the unaffected IE8. The company also declined to spell out plans for quashing the IE bug. "Microsoft is investigating new public claims of a possible vulnerability in Internet Explorer," the spokesman said, using boilerplate that the company regularly rolls out when it's asked about patching progress. "Once we're done investigating, we will take appropriate action to help protect customers ... [which] may include providing a security update through the monthly release process, an out-of-cycle update or additional guidance to help customers protect themselves." Microsoft will issue its next scheduled security updates in a little more than two weeks on Dec. 8. One security researcher said it's unlikely Microsoft will move fast enough to make that deadline. "Seeing as though they haven't even posted an advisory, and with the holiday this week, I'm doubting a Dec. 8 release," said Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Network Security. Microsoft declined to answer questions about which versions of Windows are vulnerable.

More likely, said Storms, is that Microsoft will offer steps that IE6 and IE7 users can take to defend themselves. To turn off JavaScript, users should select the "Tools" menu in IE, then click "Internet Options," the "Security" tab and the "Internet" content zone. On Saturday, Symantec recommended that users disable JavaScript in IE6 and IE7, a move that could stymie attacks, since the current exploit code requires JavaScript. Next, click "Custom Level" and in the "Settings" box, click "Disable" under "Active scripting." Click "OK" in the current dialog box, as well as the next.

WASHINGTON - One obvious follow-up question to the U.S. government's announcement this month that the federal stimulus has created or saved 30,000 jobs so far is this: How many were IT and engineering jobs? There is no information at Recovery.gov concerning the types of jobs either saved or created from the $16 billion in contracts awarded so far, representing 2% of the $787 billion stimulus. Unfortunately, there isn't an answer.

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board that provides Recovery.gov, designed to allow citizens to track funding, is posting only what it gets in reports from recipients. "We are not analyzing it in terms of types of jobs," said a board spokeswoman. "That sort of analysis may be made at a later date, once we get the additional recipient reports on grants and loans posted on the Web site," but there's no time frame for providing it, she said. This barebones information makes a rough guess possible about the quality of jobs based on description of the work, but that's it. "One of the primary reasons for the stimulus money is to create jobs and one of the primary things we would like to know from this data is what kinds of jobs were created, said Tony Fisher, the president and CEO of data management firm DataFlux Corp. The Recovery.gov site includes interactive maps and spreadsheets showing companies that have received the data, the number of jobs created or saved, and a description of some of the work. He blamed the lack of detailed information on an absence of data, a lack of consistency to the data we have and insufficient rules governing how that data is supposed to be collected and displayed. "[Recovery.gov] falls short in a number of respects in helping users understanding spending," said Craig Jennings, a senior policy analyst for OBM Watch, a nonprofit government watchdog group. This prompted the creation this month of the Coalition for and Accountable Recovery, which represents about 30 groups.

Among the problems is site navigation difficulty and an inability to search by recipient. Along with OBM Watch, some of its other members include the Center for Responsive Politics, OMB Watch, Sunlight Foundation, Economic Policy Institute. The stimulus is expected to create IT jobs but there's never been any estimate about how many. The groups criticized the usability of the Web site, and said it needed functions, such as ability to search by recipient. Both IT and engineering jobs have declined in the recession. Mark Loughbridge, IBM's chief financial officer, said this month that public sector was again the fastest growing sector with 2% growth, led by health care and education. "Now I think this is quite logical given the rollout of stimulus spend globally," he said told analysts on a third quarter earnings call this month.

However, IT firms are expecting the stimulus to perk up spending. Meanwhile, Sun Microsystems Inc. said this week it is cutting 3,000 jobs as it awaits the acquisition of Oracle Corp.

Europe's head of competition has criticized Oracle for what she characterized as a lack of cooperation over the investigation of Oracle's planned acquisition of Sun Microsystems, a spokesman for the European Commission said. Kroes said the Commission was willing to move quickly toward a final decision but "underlined that a solution lies in the hands of Oracle," according to the spokesman. In a meeting with Oracle President Safra Catz in Brussels on Wednesday, Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes "expressed her disappointment that Oracle had failed to produce, despite repeated requests, either hard evidence that there were no competition problems or, alternatively, proposals for a remedy to the competition problems identified by the Commission," a Commission spokesman said.

An Oracle spokeswoman said the company declined to comment. The Commission said it was concerned about Oracle, the world's top seller of database software, taking ownership of MySQL, the leading open-source database, which Sun acquired last year. Oracle's proposed US$7.4 billion Sun acquisition was approved by U.S. regulators in August, but two weeks later the Commission announced it would launch an investigation of the deal, citing "serious concerns" about its effects on competition in the database market. Oracle had hoped to complete its acquisition of Sun by now, but the Commission's probe, which could last up to 90 days, has held up the deal and may not be completed until January. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said last month that Sun is losing $100 million a month while it waits for the deal to close.

Meanwhile Sun's sales have been declining as rivals IBM and Hewlett-Packard take advantage of the uncertainty around Sun's business with aggressive migration plans. He has also asserted that Oracle's database competes with Microsoft's SQL Server and IBM's DB2 products, and not with MySQL. Sun announced a big round of layoffs yesterday, citing the additional time it is taking to close the deal with Oracle. Oracle is widely expected to make deeper job cuts if the deal closes. The company said it will lay off 3,000 workers around the world over the next 12 months.

Apple will launch a tablet-style device sporting a 9.6-inch display in February 2010, according to sources cited by a Taiwanese Web publication today. The tablet will feature the 9.6-inch screen, the multi-touch user interface made famous by the iPhone and iPod Touch, and a processor created by P.A. Semi, the Santa Clara, Calif. microprocessor design company that Apple purchased over a year ago . Apple's device will also reportedly include a HSPDA (High Speed Download Packet Access) module. The Taiwan Economic News said industry sources have claimed several component suppliers are building parts for an upcoming Apple tablet computer, which will launch in about five months.

HSPDA is the 3G cellular data protocol used by AT&T in the U.S.; AT&T is currently Apple's exclusive carrier partner in the United States. Verizon uses the EVDO Rev. T-Mobile, which is an Apple partner in Germany and Austria, also uses HSPDA in the U.S. If true, it would put the brakes on rumors that Verizon , which has supposedly been in talks with Apple, will replace AT&T on the computer maker's A-list. A (Evolution-Data Optimized) data protocol instead. Talk of such a device, which some analysts have dubbed an "iPod Touch on steroids," has been both brisk and long-running. The selling price for Apple's tablet, said the Taiwan Economic News 's sources, will be between $800 and $1,000. This is far from the first time that tales of an Apple tablet have been told.

In May, for example, Wall Street analyst Gene Munster, of Piper Jaffray, used circumstantial evidence and checks with Asian component suppliers to bet that Apple would release a $500-$700 tablet next year. By now, although the continuing chatter makes some sense, it's getting harder to swallow the gossip, said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research who covers Apple. "It makes sense, it hangs together, sure," said Gottheil today. "But I'm starting to think that this is just a bunch of people believing each other, or maybe even an Apple disinformation campaign." What struck Gottheil today was the specificity of the report out of Taiwan. "The sources named the companies and they named the components," he said. "That's not how Apple does business." Rather, Apple goes to great lengths to make sure its suppliers keep mum about the work they're doing for the company, Gottheil maintained. "The signs are there that it makes sense for Apple to be doing something in the 'bigger than an iPod Touch' space, but I'm not sure this report adds any evidence to those signs," Gottheil said. "It's almost starting to look like people [are] just playing with the idea or even having fun with it." Tablet rumors picked up significantly just prior to Apple's annual developers conference in early June, but analysts then predicted - correctly, as it turned out - that the company would not unveil such a device at the time.

Apple has been pretty forthcoming about its environmental policies in recent years, but given the company's high profile, groups such as Greenpeace have continually pushed for even more transparency. Apple has taken flak in this department for trailing behind the likes of Dell and HP, both of which publish their annual carbon emissions, to the tune of 471,000 tons and 8.4 million tons respectively. This week, Apple overhauled the environmental section of its website with more data about its efforts, most prominently featuring an extensive breakdown of the company's annual corporate carbon emissions. Apple, on the other hand, calculates it generates 10.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in a year.

For example, those companies' figures don't take into account the impact their products have on the environment during their lifetime. Although Dell and HP's numbers might sound significantly more environmentally friendly, it turns out that they're limited in what they actually measure. Apple, on the other hand, has explicitly broken down exactly where those 10.2 million tons come from: 38 percent from manufacturing, 5 percent during transportation, 53 percent from product use, 1 percent from recycling, and 3 percent from its own facilities. It would seem the ball is now in the court of competitors like Dell and HP, who will may quickly come under pressure to provide results as extensive as Apple's own. More to the point, the information Apple is now providing about its carbon footprint aims to reframe the debate over what it means to be an environmentally-friendly company.

Some environmental experts have lauded Apple's efforts and are hopeful that the move will spur those competitors to follow Apple's lead. But even the harshest of Apple's critics have acknowledged that Apple seems to be making genuine strides in the direction of environment friendliness. [via BusinessWeek] As always, there are also naysayers who think that Apple is only disclosing selective information that paints it in a positive light.