Pc News

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SAP admits to "some inappropriate downloads" in Oracle case

SAP AG waited until almost the last minute to refute Oracle Corp.'s strongly worded legal complaints accusing it of stealing trade secrets in a bid to attract new customers.

The German software company admitted to "some inappropriate downloads" by its TomorrowNow software support subsidiary, but said SAP never had access to the downloads. TomorrowNow was authorized to download materials from Oracle's Web site on behalf of customers, SAP said in a statement, but acknowledged that there were some inappropriate downloads of fixes and support documents. SAP announced new oversights at TomorrowNow designed to avoid such complications in the future.

"Even a single inappropriate download is unacceptable from my perspective," said Henning Kagermann, CEO of SAP, in a statement issued Tuesday. "We regret very much that this occurred."

The U.S. Department of Justice has asked for documents related to the case from SAP and TomorrowNow, SAP said, and the companies will fully cooperate with the request.

Oracle filed a surprise lawsuit against SAP on March 22 charging that the company and its TomorrowNow [CQ] third-party support subsidiary had committed "corporate theft on a grand scale."

Oracle alleged that one or more TomorrowNow staff illegally hacked into a secure support Web site for users of Oracle's PeopleSoft and JD Edwards applications and downloaded vast amounts of online content, which SAP then used to offer Oracle customers cut-rate support services.

Under a legal stipulation the two vendors agreed in mid-May that SAP had until July 2 to issue its response, and SAP said it filed its response in U.S. District Court late Monday.

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Frontline: iPhone Shows Need for New Wireless Network

Complaints about the speed of the network that Apple Inc.'s new iPhone connects to points to the need for a new broadband wireless network in the U.S., said a businessman proposing one.

The iPhone uses AT&T Inc.'s EDGE network, which AT&T says averages speeds of 100 kilobits to 150 kilobits per second. But one review in the Wall Street Journal called the network "pokey," and a review in the New York Times called the network "excruciatingly slow," saying users may "almost ache for a dial-up modem."

With new wireless spectrum scheduled to be auctioned by early next year, the launch of the iPhone demonstrates the need for a faster new network, said Reed Hundt, a former chairman at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and vice chairman of Frontline Wireless LLC. Frontline has asked the FCC to set aside 22MHz of spectrum out of 84MHz available for a national wireless broadband network, to be built by the highest bidder for the spectrum.

"The connection service is a bridge back to the 20th century," Hundt said Monday. "The iPhone is like the guy who invented the Ferrari and found out he was selling into a country of dirt roads."

Apple selected the AT&T network in part because it covers 90 percent of the U.S. AT&T has been pleased with the iPhone launch, said spokesman Todd Smith.

There are faster networks in the U.S., but they do not have the geographic coverage that EDGE provides.

"We believe the EDGE network was designed for a product like the iPhone," Smith added. "We're confident with its ability to support the device."

Hundt doesn't blame AT&T for the network speeds, he said. Instead, the U.S. government has so far failed to provide spectrum available for faster new networks, he said. "It's not AT&T, its not Apple, it's the government that arranged things so there'd be only one national network," he said.

The FCC has a chance to change that when it sets the rules for the auctions in the 700MHz band being abandoned by U.S. television stations, Hundt said. "There's one last chance for the government to take a new course, and create an open, truly national ... wireless broadband network," he said.

Frontline and other supporters of an open-access broadband network say the 700MHz spectrum auctions represent the last chance for the U.S. to create a new broadband network to compete with cable modem and DSL (digital subscriber line) providers. In late 2005, the U.S. Congress passed legislation that requires U.S. television stations to move to digital broadcasts and abandon spectrum in the 700MHz band by February 2009.

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iPhone Sales Estimates as High as 700,000

It will be a while before the official numbers come in, but some Wall Street analysts say that Apple might have sold as many as 700,000 iPhones over the device's opening weekend.

That figure comes from Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey, who had projected 350,000 units sold prior to Friday's launch.

Other analysts also projected robust sales for the weekend. Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster put sales at about 500,000 units, more than double the 200,000 he forecast before the iPhone went on sale.

"Apple has really met expectations and delivered the product they promised to deliver," said Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at JupiterResearch. "If the initial forecasts of sales are correct they have blown away everyone's expectations, except perhaps their own."

Not every analyst saw the weekend as a success. JP Morgan analyst Bill Shope pegged sales at approximately 312,000 for the weekend and said in a note to clients that demand may have been a bit disappointing.

It's clear that the iPhone generated a lot of interest on Friday's launch day. Some shoppers reported delays in activation, which some analysts attributed to high volume; AT&T said most issues have been resolved.

Approximately two percent of users have reportedly been affected by activation issues. Analysts don't see the problems over the first couple of days affecting the iPhone over the long term.

"This is a new process, but most of it was you had 500,000 people trying to activate their iPhones over one weekend," said Gartenberg. "There is a certain frustration when you spend $600 for a device and want use it right away, but it's not something that's going to happen all the time.5

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First Look: Does the iPhone Work With Current iPod Accessories?

When first announcing the iPhone back in January, Apple touted the phone's 30-pin dock connector--the same one present on every non-shuffle iPod since the 3G iPod debuted back in April 2003. The implication was that, by using this connector, the iPhone would be compatible with many accessories for the iPod. Of course, "many" means different things to different people, so you're probably wondering exactly which of the iPod gadgets you've spend so much money on over the years will work with your shiny new phone. Here a rundown based on a few days of plugging the iPhone into anything shiny we could get our hands on.

Speakers: In terms of "dockable" iPod speakers--those that connect via the iPod's 30-pin dock-connector port--the iPhone has worked with every system we've tested, and sounds great. You just place the iPhone in the dock cradle (you may need Apple's Universal Dock Adapter to get a perfect fit), or connect the appropriate dock-connector cable, and press play. On those speaker systems that automatically start playback when you turn them on, the iPhone's iPod section does indeed begin playback automatically. If your speaker system includes a remote, that remote will control playback; in fact, remotes designed to let you navigate an iPod's menus, such as the one included with JBL's excellent Radial, also let you navigate the iPhone's iPod menus. (More on remotes below.) And contrary to a few reports we've seen around the Web, in our testing the iPhone was able to play audio and charge at the same time.'

However, there are a few caveats here. The first is that when you connect the iPhone to one of these docking speaker systems, a message appears on the iPhone's screen letting you know that the iPhone's wireless features may cause audio interference with the speaker system and asking if you want to switch to Airplane Mode (which disables those wireless features). If you press Yes, you won't get any interference, but you also won't be able to make or receive phone calls or use any Internet features of the iPhone. If you press No, the iPhone will still play through the speakers, but you may hear varying amounts of static and buzzing, especially when a call comes in. (That said, I've personally been using the iPhone with dockable speakers without enabling Airplane Mode--because I want to know when someone's calling me--and, depending on the speaker system, it can be quite usable.)

A more minor issue is fit. If your speakers don't use Apple's Universal Dock, the iPhone will fit loosely in the dock cradle due to the phone's slim profile. And you may find the iPhone itself to be too tall for some systems that aren't open on top; for example, JBL's Radial Micro is a tight fit.

Of course, you can also plug any "computer" speaker system--one that connects to a standard headphone jack--into the iPhone and then control volume using the iPhone's own volume level. However, as I'll get to in the next item, you may need an adapter.

Headphones: The iPhone has a standard 1/8-inch stereo headphone minijack, so any headphones with a standard miniplug will work--assuming you can plug them in. The problem is that the iPhone's headphone jack is recessed considerably into the phone's body, so headphones with thick plugs, or with short L-shaped plugs, won't fit. If you've got such headphones, you'll need an adapter such as Belkin's $11 Headphone Adapter (pictured at right) or Shure's $40 Music Phone Adapter; the latter includes a microphone and control switch, so you can use your favorite headphones as a wired phone headset.

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Solaris to Get Linux Features

Sun Microsystems Inc. is revamping its Solaris operating system, incorporating key pieces of rival Linux software in a move that could gain better support from developers who have massed behind Linux.

Solaris is one of the main varieties of the Unix family of operating systems, known for their ability to safely and securely handle major computing tasks rather than for ease of use.

Sun itself is known for its business computers that can handle major corporate loads and it long has courted programmers who cooperatively develop Linux and other so-called open-source software, with mixed success.

The revamped Solaris system will have features borrowed from Linux that could make it easier to use, correspondence on Sun's Web site shows.

"This is a big deal to the extent that it lowers the barrier for adoption of Solaris," said IDC software analyst Al Gillen.

The new system will keep the Solaris kernel, which is a basic group of code at the heart of the operating system that controls the way other programs interact with each other as well as the computer's hardware.

"Solaris is hard to set up. It doesn't have good hardware support," said Ladislav Bodnar, founder of Distrowatch.com, a Web site that reviews open-source software. "The hope is that things may change."

Sun executives declined to comment in advance of a formal unveiling next week of the plans, called Project Indiana.

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Tiny Robot Cop Developed

IRobot Corp. plans next week to debut a prototype remote controlled robot armed with a Taser electroshock weapon that it said can help the military on the battlefield or law enforcement agencies in dangerous situations.

The small hybrid machine is based on Burlington, Mas.-based iRobot's Pentium-based PackBot Explorer robot. The hybrid, which adds a Taser X26 stun gun, stun gun to the robot, was developed jointly by iRobot and Taser International Inc.

The hybrid will be unveiled during the annual Taser user conference that begins on Monday.

The companies hope the diminutive robot - which measures eight inches high and 16-inches wide -- will be deployed and remotely used to do things such as stun or control dangerous persons while keeping army personnel or police and bystanders safe and secure.

"IRobot continually looks for new or proven technologies from best-of-industry companies to integrate on our battle-tested robots," said Joe Dyer, president of iRobot's government and industrial robots unit, in a statement. "The addition of Taser technologies onto iRobot platforms will provide a critical tool for SWAT, law enforcement and military to handle a variety of dangerous scenarios."

Resembling a remote controlled tank toy minus the turret, the PackBot Explorer sits on a shock resistant chassis mounted on two treads with flippers that enable it to cover rough terrain at speeds of up to five miles-per-hour.

The new device also carries a camera mounted on a 12-inch mast. The camera is capable of tilting and rotating to provide greater visibility to its operator during scouting missions.

Taser officials said the next step in the joint development process will depend on feedback received by military and law enforcement personnel at the conference

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Users Blast iPhone Battery Policy

A U.S. consumer rights group is attacking Apple and AT&T over the fee consumers must pay for battery replacement.

The Foundation for Consumer and Taxpayer Rights is taking the two firms to task over the fact that the fees and methodology for the battery replacement scheme wasn't announced in advance of the product launch.

Apple published information about its battery replacement plan on its Web site on Friday after the product went on sale. Replacement costs owners of the $499 or $599 device $79 plus $6.95 shipping charges. The process takes three business days, and Apple will offer a loan unit to tide users over during this period for an additional $29 charge.

The group complains that this left consumers in the dark before they purchased the device. The iPhone battery is soldered to the inside of the device and cannot be swapped by users.

The consumer advocates argue that because the replacement scheme wasn't fully disclosed before the device went on sale, some consumers who have purchased it may not have done so, had full information been available.

In a letter the group observes: "News reports quote Apple as stating that the iPhone's battery will eventually deplete itself after 300-400 charges." This means some customers will need to pay the battery tax within ten months of purchasing the product, the advocates warn.

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Thieves Test Stolen Cards on Charities

Credit card thieves are becoming big-time charity donors, but it's not out of the goodness of their hearts.

According to Symantec Corp. the criminals are starting to use charitable donations as a way to check whether their stolen credit card numbers are working.

Fraudsters have been using a similar technique for years, but until recently they tended to make minor purchases on online retail sites. Now, as these sites have become better at identifying and blocking these transactions, the criminals have begun looking elsewhere, said Zulfikar Ramzan, senior principal researcher with Symantec Corp. "Using a charitable organization as a way to verify a credit card number is a relatively new technique, and it's probably being used by a minority of the more innovative guys," he said.

Credit card numbers are bought and sold in underground "carder" forums, which bring together the people who have stolen the credit card numbers with those who want to use them. These charitable donations are typically made by the person buying the card numbers as a final check to ensure that the numbers will work, Ramzan said.

Last month the Red Cross was forced to return nearly US$7,000 that was donated in the course of 700 fraudulent transactions, said Carrie Martin, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross. "We routinely see this kind of activity," she said. "We have someone in place who deals with this on a regular basis."

This fraud accounted for a tiny sliver of the Red Cross's $6 billion in revenue last year, but the organization also has to pay staff to stay on top of the fraud, Martin said.

This is not the only time that fraudsters have found ways to misuse charities. In another common scam, the criminal will give the charity a fake check and ask that a portion of it be returned in cash. Though the check will initially clear in the charity's bank account it will eventually be returned. By then, however, the charity will have already paid out to the thieves.

"These kinds of things have hit charities before," said Ramzan "I feel bad because all these charities are trying to do good and you have these fraudsters that try to take advantage of them because of the way they work."

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Google: No Limits?

Is there any business Google won't get into?

The planned acquisition of e-mail security service provider Postini is just the latest example of Google expanding beyond its core business of selling advertising related to online search. Last month, Google bought GrandCentral Communications, which makes a voice-messaging service that provides users a single phone number. Google struck a partnership in April to sell advertising for Dish Network satellite television, and is building an engineering team to bring Google technology to television worldwide.

The acquisition of YouTube, a US$1 billion deal to buy radio ad provider dMarc Broadcasting, the introduction of a set of business tools known as Google Apps, and an 8-month-old program to sell advertising in newspapers are still more examples of Google's varied and unpredictable business model.

"I don't think they set any particular limits on themselves, especially if they think there's ability for them to do advertising in an area," says Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land.

Google must continue expanding beyond its traditional boundaries because the search advertising market is going to lose importance relative to video advertising, predicts Karsten Weide, director of IDC's digital media and entertainment program.

"While there will be more money flowing into search, even more money will flow into video ads," Weide says. "Relatively speaking, search will lose importance in the marketplace vs. video ads. That is a strategic challenge to Google because they make more than 99 percent of their revenue on search ads."

What might Google get into next? Here's a hint: Blockbuster might soon have a new competitor.

"One potential line of business is the rental and sales for video content (TV shows first, but later also movies)," Weide writes in an e-mail. "They might rent out videos, Blockbuster-style."

YouTube gives Google a presence in video, but the site's advertising opportunities are limited because major brands are reluctant to associate themselves with YouTube and its stolen content, Weide says. To make it work, Google will have to strike distribution deals with names like Viacom, NBC and Walt Disney, but those companies are "hopping mad" at Google because of its cavalier treatment of copyrighted material, Weide says.

"We believe that in the long run, the effectiveness of grainy home videos is going to be very limited," he says.

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Levine: BioShock Places Value in Skepticism

Gamepro sits down with Ken Levine to discuss the Empire State Building, interoperaility, and BioShock.

Ken Levine: A lot of people ask me, "Are you pro this?" or "Are you pro that?" on genetic research, etc., but I think the game is about, from a social commentary standpoint, the value of skepticism, the value of looking at any ideology, and going...huh. Because Andrew Ryan believes strongly in certain ideas, and I believe in some of the things he says, but the question is what happens when you stop questioning people. At the core, I'm a skeptic deep down, and that's what it's about. And in these times, it benefits everyone to be skeptics of people in power.

GP: Another obvious element of Bioshock is the stunning Art-Deco style. Is there some sort of inspiration that you've taken from or drawn you towards using that?

LEVINE: Just walk along the streets of New York. I grew up near there. Where are you from?

GP: I'm from the Bay Area.

LEVINE: Well going to the Empire State Building and Rockefeller Center, I don't know if you've ever been there, but how can you not fall in love with those buildings? To me they said, when you have this ideology Ryan has, it feels like those buildings. You know, it says, "Man can do anything". And I also think they work really well in a 3D environment and no one has seen it in games, so the artists and I fell in love with that style.

GP: Bioshock has shown to be a complex game; just playing the first two levels shows a lot of its depth. Is there something about the game in particular that gave you the most trouble with content?

LEVINE: The very nature of what someone called the interoperability -- that anything can be used as a weapon, that any object can be used -- makes for a challenging game to balance and tune. But it also makes the game really awesome, like when a tester comes back and tells you " You know you can do this, right?" and we say, "No!" We found out a few weeks ago that the bots that follow you around once you hack them; if you stick a proximity mine on them they'll kamikaze the target. That just happened. Or when you use telekinesis on a tripwire. Of course a lot of unintentional things happen also that we have to fix. But when you build an underlying simulation like we did, these situations come out and it creates more and more gameplay. The creative director of 2K has a good saying: "Say yes to the player. When you expect something to work a certain way, whenever you can, say yes to him."

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Sun Accused of Putting Users at Risk

Sun Microsystems Inc. is putting millions of Java users at risk by staggering the release of security patches for the software, security vendor eEye Digital Security Inc. said Monday.

To illustrate the problem, eEye points to a recent flaw in the Java Runtime Environment, used to run programs that are written in Java.

In January, eEye discovered a serious bug in the Java Network Launching Protocol, which is used to run Java programs over the Web. Hackers could exploit this flaw by setting up a malicious Web site that could install unauthorized software on any Java-enabled PC that visited it, according to eEye.

The flaw was patched in late June, but Sun has yet to push out the fix to its millions of Java users worldwide.

Instead, Sun has made a developer release available on its Java.sun.com download page and is holding off on a more widespread release of the fix.

The reason? So that developers can make sure that the update itself is bug-free. "There's an additional round of testing that happens before we blast it out to consumers," said Sun Spokeswoman Jacki Decoster.

The problem with this approach is that a staggered release schedule gives criminals a window of opportunity to reverse engineer the Java bug and then create attack code that can be targeted at the millions of unpatched users, said Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer with eEye.

"Sun has such a horrible update process that they released patches for this flaw a couple weeks ago, and more patches for different versions [after that]," he said via instant message. "If people were reverse-engineering the patch a few weeks ago, they have a head start on the good guys."

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Ballmer Pushes Plan for Software Plus Services

Microsoft Corp.'s top executive Tuesday for the first time outlined the company's plan to transition from a traditional software company to offering software plus services, giving some roadmap details for how the strategy will play out in the next year.

In a keynote at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Denver, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer shed more details on the plan other executives such as Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie have been teasing out over the past year -- but not many more. He gave a time frame for the early part of the transition, but mostly echoed what other executives have said about Microsoft's slow transition to adding hosted business services to its traditional software portfolio.

"For software plus services, the time is now," Ballmer said, finishing off the first of a raft of keynotes on the first day of Microsoft's annual partner conference. He said that over the next year Microsoft will continue to sell mostly on-premises software, but there will be more evidence of the transition to its hybrid model as the year goes on.

Since Microsoft began talking about its plan to gradually transition to offering more hosted services last year in a speech by Ozzie at its TechEd Conference in Boston, many noted that the company had no choice. With such an entrenched business in enterprise and consumer desktop software, it would be impossible for Microsoft to be as nimble in offering hosted services as rivals such as Google Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc., which started their businesses as Web-based services providers. And a warmer reception for hosted services is clearly the direction the enterprise market is heading, as businesses become more comfortable accessing Web-based services beyond the traditional consumer staples of e-mail and search that have been popular for years.

The transition to providing more services will touch every part of Microsoft's business, but some changes will be more obvious than others, Ballmer said. The user interface will be an important place for innovation in this area, and Microsoft's Silverlight technology is the cornerstone of that, he said. Microsoft in April introduced Silverlight, a browser plug-in that allows for rich video and interactive media experience to be delivered within Web sites.

A solid services platform on which partners can build services and also which they can resell with Microsoft managing and hosting them also will be a clear sign of the transition, Ballmer said. Microsoft already is offering a combination of consumer-oriented services such as Windows Live Hotmail and Windows Live Local Search, but will begin bulking up its portfolio of enterprise services as well, he said.

Microsoft already has unveiled business services such as Exchange Hosted Services for enterprise messaging and Office Live hosted service for small businesses. There will be new and expanded services like these as Microsoft progresses further with its software plus services strategy, Ballmer said.

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Microsoft Unveils ERP for Small Businesses

Microsoft Corp. hopes to better meet the back-office needs of smaller businesses with a new take on enterprise resource planning (ERP) software called Dynamics Entrepreneur Solution.

The software will provide smaller organizations with finance, purchasing and sales and marketing software. It's aimed at companies employing up to 49 staff and tops out at five concurrent users, according to Barb Edson, director, Microsoft Dynamics.

Along with other ERP companies, Microsoft is looking for ways to attract startups that are starting to outgrow entry-level accountancy software like Intuit Inc.'s QuickBooks and are in search of more sophisticated applications on which to run their businesses.

Based on Microsoft's existing Dynamics NAV ERP applications, Entrepreneur can be seen as a stepping stone to the full-blown Dynamics NAV as a company expands its business.

Microsoft said that Entrepreneur itself was more than just a scaled-down version of Dynamics NAV and had been specially developed for small businesses, particularly in terms of cutting back on the need for users to heavily customize the software.

Priced at ,795 (US$1,086), Entrepreneur is set to make its debut in Europe as part of a phased worldwide rollout of the software. The product will initially be available in September in Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and the U.K., Microsoft announced Tuesday at its Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Denver. As with Microsoft's other back-office applications, the software will be provided by the vendor's partners.

Microsoft also announced new software to make another one of its ERP families of products, Dynamics AX, accessible from mobile devices. Costing $495 per client access license, Dynamics AX Mobile Sales software is shipping this month. The product enables salespeople to remotely place and track orders, query sales histories and manage advertising campaigns from their Windows Mobile-based devices. The software includes Microsoft Dynamics Mobile Development Tools, which customers and partners can use to build additional mobile offerings based on Dynamics.