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2006: The Tech Year in Quotes

Technology news in 2006 has been anything but dull as industry titans Bill Gates and Scott McNealy prepared to exit stage right, long-time bitter foes Novell and Microsoft cuddled up, and Hewlett-Packard saw a spying scandal shred its reputation.

Plenty of commentary accompanied all that activity, so let's check out some of the most quote-worthy artifacts from IDG News Service stories.

Good Night and Good Luck
"I'm thrilled not to have to be CEO anymore. That was a temporary thing that I took on about 22 years ago."

--Scott McNealy on handing over Sun Microsystems CEO honors in May to ponytailed whippersnapper President Jonathan Schwartz. McNealy appeared upbeat despite having failed to fully reverse the company's poor financial performance.

"The world has had a tendency to focus a disproportionate amount of attention on me."

--Bill Gates, claiming in June he won't be missed all that much as he steps away from his daily chief software architect role at Microsoft come July 2008 to focus on his charity organization. Gates will remain as company chairman "indefinitely."

Sure, We Love Linux, But We Love Windows More
"If you want something, I'm still going to tell you [to buy] Windows, Windows, Windows."

--Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, aiming to "bridge the divide" between open-source and proprietary software with a surprise partnership with Novell announced in November. Sounds like he hasn't got that whole co-opetition thing straight yet, ditto on what the whole lovefest means for patents, with the vendors differing on their interpretations of what the deal will mean.

"I prefer to be an optimist, and will happily take the option that not everybody needs to be enemies."

-- Mr. Maverick himself, Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux kernel, with his sunny take on Microsoft/Novell, at odds with the disgust voiced by many in the open-source community with the Suse distributor.

Could've, Would've, Should've ... Didn't
"I understand there is also a written report of the investigation addressed to me and others, but I did not read it. I could have, and I should have."

--Mark Hurd, Hewlett-Packard's embattled CEO, stating the obvious in September over his failure to peruse key information describing the company's bizarre attempts to unearth the source who leaked board-level confidences.

"If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently." -- Patricia Dunn, HP's former chairman, testifying before a U.S. Congress subcommittee about those techniques Hurd didn't bother to look into, which included pretexting. Forced out of HP in the wake of the spy scandal, Dunn continues to maintain the methods were legal. After all, she was assured of their legality by HP's own lawyers.

Touching Evil
"We actually did an evil scale and decided not to serve at all was worse evil."

--Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, about the year-long soul-searching process that the company went through before deciding to offer a censored version of its services in China. Google famously espouses the "don't be evil" credo.

Telling It Like It Is
"I think my response was 'What idiot dreamed this up?'"

--Mary Ann Davidson, Oracle's chief security officer, in typical blunt manner, remembering her reaction to the company's scheme to brand its databases as "unbreakable."

"Anybody [in the Internet space] who wasn't interested in YouTube was either asleep or not being honest."

--Jonathan Miller, AOL chairman and CEO, in November, regretting that Google, not his company, bought the video-sharing startup. Less than a week later, Miller was out of a job as Time Warner replaced him with veteran television executive Randy Falco. Could the two events, perchance, be related?

The Batteries and the Bees
"It's kind of like impregnating someone. It only takes one, so the more of them there are, the more likely that you'll impregnate someone."

--Rick Clancy, a Sony spokesperson, indulging in some plain speaking in August as to how short circuits caused by microscopic metal particles in the vendor's lithium ion batteries led to a handful of laptops catching fire. The result? A series of major recalls of millions of Sony batteries.

Slicing off the Fat
"We had become bloated. It's like middle-age spread. You don't know how it happens, but one day you look down and it's there."

--Donald MacDonald, vice president and general manager of Intel's digital home group in July, as he patted his belly, graphically describing the chip giant's attempts to slim down its 100,000-strong work force.

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2006: The Year in PCs and Chips

Vendors in the PC and chip industries moved boldly in 2006, changing the marketplace map through mergers, recalls, layoffs, and lawsuits. Oh, and they launched some impressive new products too, keeping Moore's Law moving as they built smaller, faster chips and cooler, more efficient computers. Here, in chronological order, we share a sampling of the biggest events of the past 12 months.

Apple Releases Macs That Run on Intel Chips
In January Apple Computer sold its first Mac PCs that run on chips from Intel instead of on chips from IBM and Motorola, fulfilling a promise made in June 2005. Apple substitutes Intel's Core Duo chip for the PowerPC and G4 chips in its iMac and 15-inch MacBook Pro, soon followed by the Mac mini and 13-inch MacBook.

The move also let Apple expand from its own operating system. In April, Apple launches its Boot Camp software, enabling Intel-based Macs to run their choice of Apple's OS X or Microsoft's Windows XP.

AMD Announces ATI Acquisition
In July Advanced Micro Devices announces it would buy Canadian graphics chip vendor ATI Technologies for $5.4 billion. Integrating its processors with ATI's chip sets would allow AMD to sell platforms of integrated technologies, competitive with Intel bundles like Centrino, Viiv, and VPro, analysts say. Another effect of the merger is to leave Nvidia as the only independent graphics chip vendor in the market.

By November, Nvidia also says it will expand, paying $357 million to buy PortalPlayer, a maker of semiconductors for digital music players.

Battery Recall Begins
Dell recalls 4.1 million notebook batteries in August as a growing number of customers report they could short-circuit, causing some to overheat and catch fire. Within days, other vendors join the recall, leading to 8.1 million recalls of the lithium ion cells manufactured by Sony. Other PC vendors affected by the largest recall in consumer electronics history include Apple, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Lenovo, and Toshiba.

Intel Reorganizes, Lays Off Thousands
In September, Intel lays off 10,500 workers--about 10 percent of the workforce--as Chief Executive Paul Otellini enacts a promised reorganization that has already included the sale of its media and signaling business, the firing of 1000 executives, and the sale of its XScale smart phone chip division. Otellini blames slowing growth in the PC market when he predicts Intel's annual profits will reach only $9.3 billion for 2006, down from $12.1 billion in 2005. Analysts point out that Intel had also lost revenue by slashing prices on its chips in an effort to slow gains in market share by rival AMD.

Justice Department Investigates SRAM Market
The Department of Justice launches a probe in October of sales practices in the SRAM memory chip market, serving subpoenas to Cypress Semiconductor, Mitsubishi Electric, Samsung Electronics, Sony Electronics, and Toshiba. The investigation comes shortly after the Justice Department wins convictions and multimillion-dollar fines for price fixing in the closely related DRAM industry. By December, the Justice Department also turns its focus to graphics chips makers, demanding documents from AMD and Nvidia as part of an antitrust investigation.

Meanwhile, AMD continues another antitrust fight, continuing its long-running suit against Intel over accusations that the much larger chip-maker intimidated vendors from using AMD chips. That case is scheduled to come before a judge in April 2009.

HP Tops Dell as World's Largest PC Vendor
Hewlett-Packard overtakes Dell in October as the world's largest PC vendor, capping a year when Dell had reported a series of sagging profits and the start of an accounting investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. HP has its own problems, coping with a spying scandal on its board of directors that leads to criminal investigations and the resignation of chief executive Patricia Dunn. But Dell is unable to stop its loss of market share even when the company ends its longtime allegiance to Intel and begins selling PCs powered by chips from AMD as well. Dell Chief Executive Kevin Rollins says the company was also hurt by slashing prices in order to bolster market share, and pledges to spend $100 million to hire more sales and call-center workers.

Intel Launches Quad-Core Processors for PCs
Intel launches the first quad-core processors for mainstream desktops and servers, continuing its effort to rebound from a loss of sales to AMD. The new chips include the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 for gamers and Xeon 5300 for servers, coming just a few months after Intel launches a new family of dual-core chips including the "Conroe" Core 2 Duo for desktops and "Woodcrest" Xeon 5100 for servers.

Still, the arms race continues, as AMD emphasizes its advantage in power efficiency and pledges to launch its own quad-core processor by the second quarter of 2007, the "Barcelona" quad-core Opteron 8000 for servers.

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Lab Tests: Vista's Fast If You Have the Hardware

With Microsoft's Windows Vista finally released to manufacturers and on the verge of making its way to retail, we can at last get down to the business of examining precisely how well the new OS performs. In our first tests, we discovered that while Vista's hardware requirements may be steep, it should run just fine--even with the Aero bells and whistles active--on machines that meet Microsoft's Premium Ready specifications (1GB of RAM, and a DirectX 9-capable graphics board with at least 128MB of dedicated memory).

We installed the RTM (release to manufacturing) Vista Ultimate code on desktop and notebook systems of varying specs and ages, and then we ran a series of benchmarks to answer several key questions about Vista's impact on performance. Our main findings:

Vista is generally slower than XP, but it's better at multitasking on dual-core PCs.
Your PC should have 1GB of RAM at the bare minimum.
Aero won't slow you down if you use a discrete graphics processor and enough memory.
Apps run slower on the 64-bit version of Vista, but adding RAM closes the gap.
Our conclusions here aren't the last word on Vista performance, however: When we conducted our tests in November, graphics companies were still fine-tuning their drivers (for example, we decided to drop our Doom 3 gaming tests because ATI's drivers didn't yet support that game's OpenGL graphics API).

Another note: Since we used updated, Vista-compatible versions of our Photoshop and multitasking tests from the beta of WorldBench 6, the results are not comparable with those for XP systems tested under WorldBench 5.

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Microsoft Sees Botnets as Top Cyberthreat

If there's one thing that Aaron Kornblum would like to quash, it's the botnet armies.

These are the remote-controlled PCs that have been taken over without their user's knowledge. Symantec counted more than 4.5 million of them during the first six months of the year, and according to Kornblum, they are the backbone of today's cybercrime.

"Botnets are really where it's at for serious cybercriminals, because of their concentrated power," said Kornblum, a senior attorney with Microsoft's Internet Safety Enforcement team. "That power can be used for all sorts of malicious conduct on the Internet."

These armies of compromised computers are behind such scourges as spam, phishing, and denial of service attacks. More recently, the bad guys have been using botnets to boost Web advertising billings by automatically clicking on Internet ads, a practice known as clickfraud.

Phishing Scams Getting More Sophisticated
Kornblum is on a team that was created in 2002 to help crack down on cybercrime. A splinter group of three Microsoft employees who had been working on software piracy and counterfeiting, the team initially focused on computer viruses and spam. But it has since grown into a 65-person operation that has tackled child pornography, typosquatting, and, of course, the botnet threat.

Over the past year, Kornblum's group has helped law enforcement crack down on worldwide phishing scams, helping, for example, to take down a Bulgarian gang that had been spoofing Microsoft's own customer service team.

"Unfortunately, we continue to see phishing as a serious threat," Kornblum said.

Phishers have been getting more sophisticated and better at reproducing trusted Web sites. And lately they've also been taking on new targets that may not have the resources of major e-commerce or financial players.

"They're moving away from the top banking brands like Citibank ... and they're moving down to mid-level and smaller-market financial institutions like credit unions and community banks, which may not have done as much consumer education," Kornblum said.

Botnets Number-One Spam Source
Botnets are changing the economics of cybercrime, according to Daniel Druker, executive vice president of marketing with Postini. "I call it grid computing gone bad," he said.

The botnets have emerged as the number one source of spam over the past year, giving spammers access to virtually unlimited bandwidth, he said.

Because spammers no longer have to pay for the messages they send, they can e-mail larger documents, such as image files, he said. And the bad guys have been able to use these distributed networks to make it harder for vendors such as Postini to identify and block spamming computers.

There typically are about 50,000 computers sending spam and malicious content at any given moment, Druker said. Usually, these computers will pop up and operate for about 45 minutes, and then go silent, making it hard for them to be identified.

A few years ago, Bill Gates predicted that the spam problem would be solved by the end of 2006, a prediction that proved to be seriously off the mark.

Kornblum, for his part, declined to guess when the botnet problem will be solved.

"The only certainty is that the problems and challenges will continue to evolve," he said. "They're all unique, though they're interrelated, certainly ... but botnets are the most dangerous at present, because of their power."

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Congress Eyes Tech Law

WASHINGTON--Some technology vendors and advocacy groups see new opportunities in Congress in 2007, with issues such as patent reform and data protection getting fresh life under a Democratic-controlled legislature.

Democrats took control of the Senate and the House of Representatives in November's election, and many technology advocates say they expect Democrats will focus on some issues on the backburner in the past Republican Congress. Some tech vendors praised Republicans for their focus on free trade and Internet tax moratoriums, but others say the Republican Congress failed to act on several important issues.

"We're excited about the new Congress," said Jack Krumholtz, managing director of federal government affairs and associate general counsel at Microsoft. "We think there's an opportunity to get some things done."

Here's a list of tech-related issues likely to come up in Congress in 2007:

Data Breach Alerts
Advocacy groups such as the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) have long called for comprehensive legislation to protect personal privacy, including rules for organizations handling personal data and limits on government surveillance. In November 2005, after a rash of data breaches, Microsoft joined privacy advocates in urging legislation, including a baseline data protection standard and giving individuals control over how their personal data is used.

Krumholtz and Leslie Harris, CDT's executive director, both said they hope the Democratic Congress will take a new look at privacy legislation. In addition, Democrats are likely to investigate the Bush administration's surveillance programs, such as monitoring phone calls and Internet conversations, and its use of data mining to assess risks posed by individual travelers.

"There has been basically no oversight," Harris said of the Republican Congress.

Part of comprehensive privacy legislation would be a data breach notification provision, Krumholtz added. After a series of high-profile data breaches in early 2005, members of Congress introduced about a dozen bills requiring organizations with data breaches to notify affected customers, but the issue was held up partly because several congressional committees claimed jurisdiction.

Cybersecurity vendors and many other tech companies will renew the call for data breach notification legislation in 2007. "Clearly, the data breach concerns have only gotten more acute over the last year," Krumholtz said.

Wanted: Patent Reform
Many large tech companies, including Microsoft, Dell, and eBay, have long sought patent reform. Some of those companies have asked Congress to make it more difficult for so-called patent "trolls" to win huge patent awards or get injunctions, forcing large companies to shut down entire product lines because of one infringing component.

Tech companies complain about people who buy up patents just to collect license fees, but many small inventors own patents and don't have the means to bring the patented products to market.

But the Supreme Court may have pre-empted Congress on the issue of patent injunctions. In a May ruling, the court set aside a lower court decision to stop eBay from using the "buy it now" feature on its Web site because of a patent dispute. The Supreme Court ruled that a lower court must weigh several factors before granting a patent junction, instead of granting near-automatic injunctions as in recent years.

After the Supreme Court action, Congress is likely to focus its attention on the quality of patents granted, an issue that has wide industry support. Tech groups have pushed for more money for the Patent and Trademark Office and a post-patent review process as a way to challenge patents.

Best Protecting Property?
Some small inventors agree that better patent examinations are needed, but have objected to other proposals pushed by tech groups, including changing the way patents are awarded.

Many companies pushing for patent reform "are doing their best to eviscerate America's patent system to avoid the consequences of their politely put unauthorized use of inventors' property," said Ronald Riley, president of the Professional Inventors Alliance.

Large pharmaceutical firms also have fought patent reform, but Christopher Hankin, senior director of federal affairs at Sun Microsystems, said he expects the Democratic Congress will be less cozy with the pharmaceutical industry than many Republicans are.

"We could work these issues out," he said of the patent debates. "Unfortunately, we never got to the situation where the other side felt the need to negotiate."

Broadband Reform, Net Neutrality
Two committees spent many hours in 2006 working on broadband bills with the goal of encouraging broadband adoption and improving services offered. But Congress failed to agree on a final bill before adjourning in December, partly because of a contentious debate about net neutrality provisions that would prohibit broadband providers from giving preferential treatment to their own Web content and blocking or slowing competitors' content.

Then, in mid-December, the Federal Communications Commission voted to streamline the franchising process that broadband providers must go through to offer television over Internet Protocol, in competition with cable TV providers. Franchising reform was one of the major drivers of the 2006 broadband bills, and after the FCC action, lawmakers may have less enthusiasm to tackle a wide-ranging broadband bill.

Officials from Verizon Communications, a major backer of franchise reform, say they will drop the issue in 2007, focusing instead on state legislation and on rule-making at the FCC.

But individual pieces of the broadband bills may still move forward. Net neutrality ended up as a largely partisan issue, with Democrats generally supporting a law, and some on their side will likely push the issue again. But it's still hotly debated, and Republicans in the Senate could use parliamentary rules to hold up a Net neutrality bill, just as Democrats held up the broadband bill in 2006, warned one Senate Republican staffer, speaking on background.

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Skype to Target Businesses

TALLINN, ESTONIA -- Skype will continue to aim at the business market, adding functions for specific business needs, executives said last week at the company's development center in Tallinn, Estonia.

The company's most recent 3.0 version of its software allows system administrators to configure and control Skype use across an enterprise and Skype will build on that. Its software provides Internet telephony service as well as messaging, video conferencing, and file transfer.

Skype for Business
In the short to medium term, Skype will rely on the growth of an "ecosystem" of third parties to adapt and integrate Skype for specific enterprise uses, executives said. "My opinion is that it is better to provide good information and let [other] people build the Skype ecosystem," said Chief Security Officer Kurt Sauer, adding that "the best ideas are somewhere else."

Vice President, Mobile & Telecom Services Michael Jackson joked that "we will not, in the short-term, be having installers in Skype trucks visiting businesses," but added that independent "Skype integrators may come along."

He said "Skype for business" will evolve as a set of functions that can be switched on or off and fine-tuned according to the needs of the enterprise or organization.

Jackson pointed to a set of features for system administrators in Skype 3.0 that allows extensive control, making Skype "more suitable" for company use. The features include the ability to implement a usage policy and allocate prepaid service credits and accounts.

About 30 percent of Skype use is currently for business, mainly by small businesses, but there is increasing interest from larger companies, he said. He cited the integration of a Skype click-to-call feature at the USRobotics Web site as one example of "mainstream business" adopting a technology that was first designed for home use.

Skype 'Worm,' Bandwidth Concerns
Speaking to journalists at Skype's development center, Sauer also addressed the issue of an alleged worm recently said to have propagated in the Skype network as well as claims that corporate networks using Skype could become overloaded "supernodes."

"We have done reverse engineering on this so-called worm, and it is not a worm, but a real piece of malware, using Skype to send an instant message to users which contains a Web URL that allows the download of other malware that was apparently targeted at Pay Pal," he said, adding that the offending site had been shut down. Pay Pal is the payment system owned by Skype parent eBay.

Supernodes were used to track 300 Skype users in a kind of distributed directory of all users to form a "global index" for Skype. "Supernode traffic is just short query traffic that uses little bandwidth, supernodes are not involved in speech traffic," he explained.

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Report: Feds Looking at Apple Stock-option Documents

U.S. federal investigators are "looking closely" at stock-option documents that former Apple Computer officials allegedly falsified to boost their own profits, according to the The Recorder legal newspaper.

Revelations regarding past stock-options practices are expected in Apple's delayed annual report due out Friday.

Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs, who publicly apologized for his actions in an October statement, has hired outside counsel separate from the company's, the newspaper also reported late Tuesday in its online edition.

Background
When its three-month-long internal investigation ended in October, Apple said that it "raised serious concerns" about the actions of two former executives related to accounting, recording and reporting stock-option grants. Citing "people with knowledge of Apple's situation" and "individuals with knowledge of the probe," The Recorder said that the two are Nancy Heinen, former senior vice president and general counsel, and Fred Anderson, former chief financial officer.

Anderson resigned in October as the company announced the internal investigation's end. He said then he believed it was in Apple's best interest for him to resign. Heinen left the company, quietly and without comment, in May. At the time, a company spokesman confirmed she had left, but couldn't say why.

Tuesday's news report sent Apple's (AAPL) share price tumbling this morning, but as the East Coast midday approached, ground was regained.

Other Investigations
Apple is among almost 200 companies that have disclosed internal investigations as well as federal probes by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission or the U.S. Department of Justice, or both, related to stock-options practices, including backdating of options.

No one at Apple, in Cupertino, California, could be reached to comment today. The Recorder quoted a spokesman declining to comment beyond what Apple says in public filings on the matter.

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Earthquakes Disrupt Internet Access in Asia

SINGAPORE -- A pair of powerful earthquakes off the coast of Taiwan damaged undersea cables and disrupted telephone and Internet access today in Asia.

"All of the ISPs in Singapore are affected," said Michael Sim, a spokesman for Starhub Internet, which provides cable and wireless Internet services, referring to connectivity problems in Singapore. Sim blamed the disruption on damage to undersea cables caused by Tuesday's earthquakes. Internet access in the city slowed to a crawl, and some Web sites were unreachable.

"Everybody's doing their best to migrate [traffic] to alternate routes or to fix the affected routes," Sim said.

Japan's NTT Communications said 84 leased lines were out of service as a result of the problems, and international toll-free calling was being disrupted. Conventional international calling was in operation albeit with limited capacity, said Akiko Suzaki, a spokeswoman for the carrier in Tokyo.

The Power of the Quakes
A magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck off the southwest coast of Taiwan, near the town of Pingtung, at 8:26 p.m., local time, on Tuesday, according to Taiwan's Central Weather Bureau. The U.S. Geographical Survey (USGS) said it was stronger at 7.1, and Japan's Meteorological Agency estimated it at magnitude 6.9.

That quake was followed by another eight minutes later with a magnitude of 6.4, which the USGS estimated at 7.0, and the Japanese Meteorological Agency estimated at magnitude 7.2. Southern Taiwan was also hit by several powerful aftershocks measuring between magnitude 5.9 and 5.2, the CWB said.

The quakes, among the most powerful to hit Taiwan in recent years, left at least two people dead, according to press reports.

Telecomm Affected
That first quake knocked out parts of the SeaMeWe 3 (South East Asia Middle East Western Europe 3) and APCN2 (Asia Pacific Cable Network 2) underseas cables. Both are major telecommunications arteries in East Asia, and their temporary loss led to the problems being observed today. Traffic that traversed the cables has been switched onto alternate routes, but those other cables are now congested.

As a result Taiwan's telecommunications infrastructure was hit hard, with just 40 percent of international calling capacity to the U.S. functioning normally, Chunghwa Telecom, the country's largest operator, said in a statement. Calling capacity to Japan and China was also affected, with 11 percent and 10 percent of capacity operational, respectively, it said.

Damage to the cables also disrupted Internet access in China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, Chunghwa said, noting that it will take up to three weeks to repair the affected cable systems.

In Beijing, a China Network Communications (China Netcom) representative said some international connections had been affected. That disruption left some international Web sites accessible in Beijing, while others could not be reached. The spokesman did not know when full service might be restored.

The region where the earthquake occurs is near the boundary of the Eurasian plate and Philippine plate. The region is one of the most seismically active regions of the globe.

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2007: Top Software Trends--Vista, Virtualization

Many of the software trends that percolated in the industry in 2006 will gather more steam in 2007, but several stand out as contenders to change the game for the market in the new year. Below are some of the key software trends to watch for in 2007.

Windows Vista...Again
Just when you thought it was over, the chatter surrounding Microsoft's long-delayed Windows client update has only just begun. 2007 will be a crucial year for the OS, which will finally make its mainstream debut to consumers at the end of January. Microsoft, its hardware and component partners and Wall Street will be keeping a keen eye on customer adoption of Vista to see if it really was worth the wait. 2007 also may be the year Apple Computer's Mac OS could gain more mass appeal among users that in the past might have bought a Windows PC, giving Vista its first real competition in ages. The competition can be attributed to two things. One, Apple now offers Intel chip-based PCs that are less expensive than previous Apple computers and thus a more viable option for the average PC user. Secondly, more consumers seem to be catching on to the fact that the Mac OS is -- and has always been -- more cutting-edge, attractive and just so much more fun to use than Windows.

Software As A Service (SAAS)
As Google and SAAS pioneer Salesforce.com continue to be financial successes, other companies begin sending out software that has traditionally been sold in packages to customers over the Web. Microsoft may soon be joining the fray, and in fact is steadily building out its Web-based service business under the direction of Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie. Indeed, many believe Vista will be the last packaged-software version of Windows as Microsoft eventually will begin offering new versions of the OS over the Web. Keep an eye on less packaged software and more SAAS offerings from other traditional players in 2007 as well, including Oracle and SAP AG.

Virtualization
Enterprises will continue to adopt this software, which enables more than one OS to run side-by-side on a single server. Nearly every major hardware and software vendor -- from IBM to Intel to Microsoft to virtualization giant VMWare -- has a vested interest in virtualization, and expect its use to become more pervasive in 2007. However, as that happens, virtualization -- along with related sever technology that contains multiple processors -- will change the game for how software and hardware is priced, setting the stage for new pricing models across the industry.

Business Intelligence (BI)
Giving enterprises more insight into the factors that affect their business is becoming an increasing focus for enterprise software companies, which is why business intelligence itself is a growing market. With Microsoft gradually building out its business intelligence portfolio, pure plays like Business Objects SA and Cognos are getting nervous that their partnerships with the vendor are about to be cannibalized. Unfortunately for them, they are probably right, and by the end of 2007, the competitive landscape in BI will look different than it does today.

Office Productivity
Windows Vista won't be the only major software package to hit the streets from Microsoft in 2007 -- a new and improved version of Office is expected to be on retail shelves at the end of January. But as Microsoft repositions its revamped worker productivity suite as a business intelligence and collaboration tool, keep an eye on online competitors from Google and others to see if they begin loosening Office's stranglehold on the market. The new partnership between Microsoft and Novell also will be a factor in this space, as Novell plans to support Microsoft's Office document format in its version of the open-source OpenOffice suite by the end of January. This will allow users of OpenOffice to better send and receive files from Microsoft Office users, making the key open-source alternative to Microsoft Office a more viable option for the mainstream user.

Service-Oriented Architectures (SOAs)
SOAs have been making "technology to watch" lists for several years running, yet the IT architecture, which is based on the idea of linking independent applications as services in a network to create custom composite applications, is still in its earliest stages of adoption. Expect enterprise companies to continue getting their feet wet by adopting SOA projects to solve specific needs in their businesses, and expect companies such as IBM, SAP, BEA Systems and Microsoft to continue to trumpet their software products as the best ones to use as the underlying infrastructure for those projects.

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Intel Ordered to Produce Foreign Evidence in AMD Case

Advanced Micro Devices will be able to collect evidence about events outside the U.S. for an antitrust lawsuit against Intel.

AMD alleges Intel used its dominant position in the microprocessor business to pressure system makers not to use AMD chips in their products. Its suit, before Judge Joseph Farnan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, is scheduled to be heard beginning April 2009.

Intel had argued against allowing discovery, or the collection of evidence, for documents involving activities outside the U.S. But it decided not to object to a Dec. 15 recommendation by Special Master Vincent Poppiti that foreign discovery should go forward, said Intel spokesman Chuck Molloy. A special master is a specialist appointed to overlook certain aspects of a suit.

Intel told Judge Farnan in a letter yesterday that it wouldn't fight Poppiti's recommendation. The same day, Farnan ordered Intel to produce documents and other evidence sought in discovery that concern its business outside the U.S. In a press release today, AMD hailed the order as a major victory in its suit, which was filed in June 2005.

Background
AMD alleges that Intel, which had about 80 percent of the global microprocessor market, tried to keep system makers from using AMD chips through actions such as threatening to withhold incentive payments.

Intel, based in Santa Clara, California, had argued it shouldn't have to produce evidence about its actions outside the U.S. because the court didn't have jurisdiction there. AMD said those foreign actions could affect U.S. customers. In September, Judge Farnan asked Poppiti to make a recommendation on the discovery issue. It was issued Dec. 15, and Intel had until Wednesday to file an objection.

Although Intel is no longer fighting foreign discovery, it isn't conceding that the evidence can be admitted in court, Molloy said. In his recommendation, Poppiti stated he wasn't making a decision about whether the evidence could be used, Intel said in its letter to Judge Farnan.

Discovery has just begun in the case, Molloy said. The next scheduled event in the case is a hearing before Judge Farnan on Jan. 12.

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AT&T Offers Concessions for BellSouth Acquisition

In a bid to win approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for its planned $67 billion acquisition of BellSouth, AT&T has expanded the set of concessions it's offering to overcome opposition to the deal.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has already given its approval for the deal, but FCC commissioners are split, with some concerned about whether the deal will reduce competition in the market. Competing carriers and consumer groups have also lobbied the commission to block the deal.

Buy-Out Delayed Again
In November, the FCC cancelled plans to consider AT&T's acquisition of BellSouth -- the second time that the commission delayed considering the proposed buy-out.

AT&T laid out its latest concessions in a letter sent to the FCC on Thursday, Dec. 28. Among the conditions offered in the letter, AT&T pledged to maintain a "neutral network" and not prioritize or degrade network traffic based on "source, ownership or destination."

AT&T also pledged to maintain the number of "settlement" Internet peering agreements that exist on the merger closing date for three years. If any of the 10 largest organizations that maintain peering agreements with AT&T and BellSouth shut down during this three-year period, the company will replace that relationship with another peering agreement, it said.

[abadani69]

[abadani69]

www.samandehi**** وwww.Samandehi.com كه سرور آن هم مانند سرور سايت*ها و وبلا*گ*هاي داخلي در خارج از كشور وجود دارد، هر لحظه ممكن است در معرض تهديد و سوء استفاده* قرار گيرد. چراكه صاحبان سايت*ها در اين ساماندهي، علاوه بر ارايه* مشخصات و نشاني و شماره*هاي تماس، بايد انگيزه*هاي خود را هم از راه*اندازي سايت مورد نظر اعلام كنند كه به*نظر مي*رسد اين اطلاعات، از طريق ديتاسنترهاي پايگاه*هاي يادشده كه گويا يكي از آن*ها در كشور آمريكا قرار دارد، قابل دستيابي و طبقه*بندي ازسوي آنها خواهد بود. ازسوي ديگر، اطلاعات و محتوايي كه بر روي سايت*ها و وبلاگ*ها منتشر مي*شود، جزوي از اطلاعات ملي هر كشوري به*شمار مي*آيد؛ زيرا هر يك از افراد با رويكرد و هدف خاصي در اين فضا فعاليت مي*كنند، بنابراين اين سوال وجود دارد كه آيا جمع*آوري اين اطلاعات و مشخص شدن هويت افرادي كه با هر شخصيت حقيقي و حقوقي در فضاي مجازي ايران فعاليت مي*كنند و چه هدفي در منتشر كردن اطلاعات و افكار و عقايد خود دارند، نمي*تواند با در اختيار قرار دادن اطلاعاتي ارزشمند به بيگانگان، امنيت ملي كشور را با خطر مواجه كند؟ "

این خبرگزاری در ادامه با اشاره به وجود 11 میلیون کاربر اینترنتی در کشور می افزاید: "مسوولان امر هنوز درباره*ي روند و چگونگي اجراي اين طرح و ابهام*هاي آن اطلاع*رساني دقيقي انجام نداده*اند تا جزئيات بيشتر در اين*باره كاملا روشن و مشخص شود كه آيا تمام سايت*ها و حتي وبلاگ*هايي كه در فضاي مجازي كشور حتي با هدف*هاي غيراطلاع*رساني فعاليت مي*كنند، نيز جزو اين سامان*دهي به*شمار مي*آيند. البته بر روي سايت ستاد سامان*دهي پايگاه*هاي اينترنتي ايراني و در بخش راهنماي ثبت سايت*ها آمده است كه کليه*ي سايت*ها اعم از خبري، اطلاع*رساني، علمي، آموزشي و... که داراي دامنه* منحصربه*فرد (Domain) مي*باشند، ملزم به تکميل فرم ثبت*نام در طرح سامان*دهي سايت*هاي ايراني هستند. ثبت وبلاگ*هاي بدون دامنه* اختصاصي، به*عنوان مثال test.samandehi.com اجباري نيست و در صورت تمايل به ثبت وبلاگ، از اطلاعات جمع*آوري شده در طرح*هاي حمايت از پايگاه*هاي اينترنتي استفاده خواهد شد؛ همچنين وب*سايت يا وبلاگ معرفي*شده، بايد داراي حداقل يک صفحه (Home Page) باشد."

[Rasputin]

The Web's Most Useful Sites

The lowly browser is becoming the most powerful piece of software on your computer. Despite the promises of chip makers and PC manufacturers, a Web application like Gmail running on a massive server farm thousands of miles away can often be faster and more reliable than the best client-based program.

Developers are pushing browsers to their limits by creating even better online alternatives to desktop apps, ranging from spreadsheets to instant messaging tools to full-blown operating systems.

However, storing your data remotely raises privacy and security concerns, and Web apps that rely on JavaScript are ripe targets for hackers. Browsers still struggle to mimic the interfaces of desktop programs, and no browser yet has an "application mode" that lets it appear on your desktop instead of as just another browser window among ten others.

Despite these limitations, innovative, agile, and low-cost Web services are blooming across the Internet's landscape. We looked at the best of the new Web services in 14 categories, ranging from online office suites and other productivity tools to recommendation services and event-listing sites. We found several knockouts, but we also identified a few sites that aren't quite ready to replace old standbys on your desktop.

Along the way we also found some of the best widgets--small desktop applications that pull data from Web sites--and mashups, which combine the best of two sites to make an even better result.