Pc News

[Rasputin]

Logitech Shows Mini Wireless Keyboard for TVs

LAS VEGAS -- Logitech plans to show off at the Consumer Electronics Show here a mini-keyboard that controls a person's PC wirelessly from the comforts of their family room sofa.

The handheld QWERTY keyboard, called the diNovo Mini keyboard, is designed for people who have connected their PCs to their TVs, allowing them to access photos, videos and other content on the PCs as well as navigate the Web and watch downloaded shows on their TV, the company said.

The mini-keyboard uses Bluetooth 2.0 wireless technology to control PC functions and includes hotkeys for media players and Web browsers, as well as page-up and page-down buttons that allow people to scroll when surfing the Web and zoom in and out of documents and images. Bluetooth has a range of around 30-feet from the PC, Logitech said.

The device also incorporates ClickPad, a round, thumb-sized pad for use in pointing, scrolling or clicking on a Web link. It can also be used as a media remote and a directional pad to navigate menus and make selections. The ClickPad is backlit in orange when in touch-pad mode, and green when it is in media-remote mode.

The keyboard keys are always backlit in orange to keep the device on the eyes.

The diNovo Mini keyboard is expected to go on sale in the U.S. and Europe in late January for US$149.99.

[Rasputin]

Yahoo to Support OpenID Single Sign-On

People with a Yahoo user name and password will be able to use that ID information to access non-Yahoo Web sites that support the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework, reducing the amount of different log-in information people need to create, remember and enter online.

Millions Participate

Already, almost 10,000 Web sites support OpenID, an open framework available for free to end users and Web site operators alike, according to the OpenID Foundation.

Yahoo's move will triple the number of OpenID accounts to 368 million by adding its 248 million active registered users to the rolls, the company said Thursday.

OpenID addresses one of several issues related to giving people more control of their online activities. Other groups are focusing on data portability, to let people move around the data and content they create online, so that they don't have to enter it manually in, say, every social-networking site they sign up for.

Yet other initiatives, like Google's OpenSocial, aim to create standard interfaces so that developers can create applications that run in multiple social-networking sites, instead of having to rewrite the same application multiple times for every site.

For all of these initiatives, it's critical for major Internet players to get involved, so that the benefits of standard technology and methods developed by groups like OpenID can have a real-world impact.

Unsurprisingly, in Thursday's statement, Scott Kveton, the OpenID Foundation's chairman, hailed Yahoo's support as a crucial validation of the framework that will help spur its adoption by other large Web site operators.

Other major players that have expressed interest and gotten involved in varying degrees with OpenID include Google, Six Apart, AOL, Sun, Novell and Microsoft.

How it Works

Yahoo users will be able to take advantage of OpenID in two ways, Raj Mata, Yahoo's membership director, said in an interview.

The first is through the traditional OpenID authentication method: a unique URL string in the format http://me.yahoo.com that will be assigned to each Yahoo member and which they can enter into the log-in prompt in OpenID-supporting sites. That URL string will start with http://me.yahoo.com and be followed by a unique identifying word, Mata said.

On Jan. 30, Yahoo members will be able to retrieve their OpenID URL by going to the Yahoo/OpenID site. The OpenID URL will be assigned by Yahoo, but users will be able to change the unique part of the string to a word of their choice, Mata said.

The other way in which Yahoo users will be able to take advantage of OpenID is in sites that, in addition to the URL string, will also embed a conventional Yahoo log-in prompt on their site. In those cases, Yahoo users will simply need to enter their Yahoo user name and password to log in. The information will be verified on Yahoo servers and, once authenticated, Yahoo will inform the external site that the person is a Yahoo user. The external site doesn't see any log-in information, Mata said.

Launching January 30

On January 30, the Yahoo/OpenID URL will work with all OpenID-supporting sites, while the more conventional log-in prompt is expected to be operational on a few sites, such as Plaxo's, that are collaborating with Yahoo to implement it, Mata said. Yahoo hopes that as OpenID matures and gets refined, the authentication method will move away from the URL method and toward the conventional log-in prompt, he said. Yahoo will put instructions and code on its Web site so that third-party developers can embed its log-in prompt on their sites.

Yahoo's announcement doesn't come as a complete surprise, since signs that it had been working on an OpenID implementation had surfaced. For example, a short message in the domain me.yahoo.com indicating the company would act as an identity provider for OpenID was spotted last week.

Yahoo participated in the development of version 2.0 of the OpenID framework, which the company said provides new security features. Yahoo users who log in to third-party OpenID sites should know that the log-in process doesn't reveal e-mail or instant-message addresses, Yahoo said Thursday.

[Rasputin]

Yahoo Board Will Decline Microsoft Bid, Report Says

Yahoo Inc's board believes Microsoft Corp's unsolicited bid of $44.6 billion to acquire Yahoo "massively undervalues" the company and directors are set to reject the offer, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday, citing an unnamed source.

Microsoft's $31 per share offer fails to take account of the risks that a merger between the world's largest software maker and Yahoo would be rejected by regulators, the paper reported, citing "a person familiar with the situation."

A spokeswoman for Yahoo, a diversified Internet media company, declined to comment on the proceedings of the company's board of directors.

[Rasputin]

Toshiba Abandons HD DVD

Toshiba will discontinue its HD DVD products, it said Tuesday, handing victory to rival high definition disc format Blu-ray Disc.

The company will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders.

It will reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail markets and aims to cease the businesses altogether by the end of March.

But the Japanese electronics giant pledged to provide full product support and after-sales service for owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

Recent changes in the market prompted the decision, Toshiba said. Early this year, Warner Bros. said it would stop issuing movies on HD DVD in the coming months and rely exclusively on Blu-ray Disc. The Hollywood studio was one of three major studios remaining in the HD DVD camp, and its defection created widespread belief that the battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc was now over.

More recently, major U.S. retail chain Wal-Mart announced it would phase out the sale of HD DVD products, moving to exclusivity with Blu-ray Disc. Electronics retailer Best Buy also said it would back Blu-ray Disc, but it did not say it would stop offering HD DVD.

Warner made its decision based on consumer confusion and indifference to high definition movies, an indifference that cost Hollywood in lost revenue, it said. Wal-Mart said U.S. customers preferred Blu-ray Disc movies and hardware. Blu-ray Disc is the high definition disc format championed by Sony.

"This once again shows why incompatible and mutually exclusive formats should be avoided at all cost by the industry," said Carl Gressum, a senior analyst at Ovum. "It reduces profitability and delays customer adoption."

"The big question is, however, the impacts on Toshiba as an electronics company," he added. "It has after all bet its disc media business on HD DVD, as well as gone for HD DVD integration into some of its laptop PCs. The channel has inventory to clear, and demands from owners of HD DVD players."

Toshiba said its decision came after careful analysis of the long-term impact of continuing the format war, and said a swift decision was called for to help the high definition market develop.

The company also pledged to remain a player in the high definition market. Developing HD DVD created many assets for Toshiba and its partners, which include Microsoft, Intel, HP, and Universal Studios, the company said. Toshiba plans to work with these companies to seek future business opportunities.

[Rasputin]

San Francisco - Think you can get away with using e-mail and the Internet in violation of company policy? Think again.

A new survey found that more than a quarter of employers have fired workers for misusing e-mail, and one third have fired workers for misusing the Internet on the job. The study, conducted by the American Management Association (AMA) and The ePolicy Institute, surveyed 304 U.S. companies of all sizes.

The vast majority of bosses who fired workers for Internet misuse, 84 percent, said the employee was accessing porn or other inappropriate content. While looking at inappropriate content is an obvious no-no on company time, simply surfing the Web led to a surprising number of firings. As many as 34 percent of managers in the study said they let go of workers for excessive personal use of the Internet, according to the survey.

Among managers who fired workers for e-mail misuse, 64 percent did so because the employee violated company policy and 62 percent said the workers' e-mail contained inappropriate or offensive language. More than a quarter of bosses said they fired workers for excessive personal use of e-mail and 22 percent said their workers were fired for breaching confidentiality rules in e-mail.

Companies are worried about the inappropriate use of the Internet, and so 66 percent of those in the study said they monitor Internet connections. As many as 65 percent of them use software to block inappropriate Web sites. Eighteen percent of the companies block URLs to prevent workers from visiting external blogs.

Companies use different methods to monitor workers' computers, with 45 percent of those participating in the survey tracking content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard. An additional 43 percent store and review computer files. Twelve percent monitor blogs to track content about the company, and 10 percent monitor social-networking sites.

Companies are keen to track employee e-mail and Internet behavior in part due to legal fears. According to research done by the AMA and ePolicy in 2006, 24 percent of companies in the study had e-mail subpoenaed by courts, and another 15 percent have faced lawsuits based on employee e-mails.

The researchers found that even though only two states require companies to notify their workers that they're monitoring them, most tell employees of their monitoring activities. Of the companies that monitor workers in the survey, 83 percent said they tell employees that they are monitoring content, keystrokes, and time spent at the keyboard. As many as 84 percent tell employees that they review computer activity, and 71 percent alert workers that they monitor their e-mails.

[Rasputin]

It's Windows Vista! Only Cheaper!

Okay, now this is unexpected: Microsoft is slashing the price of some retail versions of Windows Vista, effective when the SP1 version rolls out later this year. Vista Ultimate's full version will go to $319 fro $399 (an upgrade is now $$219, down from $259); Home Premium's upgrade is now $129, down from $159. The Microsoft site has an interview with an exec who talks about the news.

Who will benefit from this development? Basically, folks with Windows XP machines who have chosen not to upgrade to Vista until now because they found it pricey. But it's not as easy as that: Most of those people probably have PCs they bought in 2006 or before, and while some of those aging machines will run Vista well, many won't. (If you bought a Windows XP computer in 2007, I have a hunch you did so specifically to avoid Windows Vista, and therefore today's news means little or nothing to you.)

I certainly hear some grumbling about the cost of Vista--especially Ultimate, which, even at its new price, is pretty expensive compared to Apple's $129 Max OS X 10.5 "Leopard." But I'm curious whether there are really that many people out there who have been itching to buy a Vista upgrade--and have a PC potent enough to run it well--but haven't done so yet.

One also wonders what's motivating Microsoft to cut prices. The company says that research showed that a cheaper Vista would appeal to more computer users beyond early adopters and geeks. Logical enough. But did it misjudge the public's willingness to fork over $300 for a piece of software when it initially priced Vista? And is the price drop a sign of panic, or a confident statement that it thinks Vista has mass appeal?

Today's news doesn't affect the price of new Windows Vista computers. And I have a sneaking suspicion that for every Microsoft customer who's psyched by the prospect of a lower-cost Vista, there are several who'd be far more thrilled if the company undid its announced plans to discontinue Windows XP on June 30th. (I've rarely if ever run into anyone who's told me that he or she thinks Windows Vista is a major argument for buying a new computer--but a lot of folks have worriedly asked me if it's still possible to buy an XP box.)

CNET's Ina Fried has more news and analysis on all this.

[Rasputin]

Is Microsoft Losing Credibility?

Microsoft's brand power has been in sharp decline over the past four years, an indication the company is losing credibility and mindshare with U.S. business users, according to a recent study by market research firm CoreBrand.

According to the CoreBrand Power 100 2007 study, which polled about 12,000 U.S. business decision-makers, Microsoft dropped from number 12 in the ranking of the most powerful U.S. company brands in 2004 to number 59 last year. In 1996, the company ranked number 1 in brand power among 1,200 top companies in about 50 industries, said James Gregory, CEO of CoreBrand.

CoreBrand measures brand power using four criteria. It first rates the familiarity of a company's brand. Once a company has a certain level of familiarity, they are ranked according to three "attributes of favorability": overall reputation, perception of management and investment potential, Gregory said. While Microsoft's brand is still eminently recognizable, the company is declining in all three favorable attributes, he said.

Gregory said that a decline in and of itself is not indicative that a company is losing its mindshare or reputation among customers. However, what's significant in Microsoft's case is that the decline has been consistent over a number of years, and has plunged dramatically in a brief time.

"When you see something decline with increasing velocity, it's a concern," he said.

Among its peers in the category of Computers, Peripherals and Computer Software, Microsoft is second to IBM in brand power, with Toshiba a close third, Gregory said. If Microsoft's downward trend continues, Toshiba could pass it in brand power next year, he said.

Gregory could only speculate as to why Microsoft's reputation has been declining, since his firm does not ask people that specific question. He said the "underwhelming" response to Windows Vista might be one reason, and Apple's clever "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" advertising campaign -- which paints Windows in an unfavorable light -- may be another.

IBM suffered a "much faster and more severe" decline in brand power in the early 1990s, Gregory said, and it took them 10 years to rebuild the brand's reputation. To stage a similar turnaround, Microsoft must have a clearer vision of the direction in which the company is headed and put forth leaders that people can trust to articulate that vision, he said.

Microsoft, which has been diversifying its business beyond packaged software in the past several years, has struggled to articulate how the many facets of its business -- software, entertainment and online among them -- show a cohesive business plan. The company has been trying to clarify at least one of those strategies -- its online advertising business -- with new services and a bid to purchase Yahoo. However, Gregory suggested it may take more than that to raise the perception of its brand.

[Rasputin]

Apple Sued Over "Millions of Colors" Display Claim

Apple is facing another class action lawsuit, this time regarding the latest release of 20-inch iMacs and their inability to properly display "millions of colors."

The lawsuit was filed by Chandra Sanders, a Texas resident and unhappy Apple owner. In her lawsuit she claims that Apple knows that the iMac monitors can only display 252,144 true colors, despite constantly marketing the iMac as displaying "millions of colors" on its Web site and in marketing material.

Should Apple Be Turning Red Over This?

The merit of the case against Apple are a bit fishy. Apple uses a tech slight of hand in the way it creates colors. It tricks you into seeing millions of colors by using illusions of sorts. To create a desired shade, the iMac shows flickers between similar shades at high speeds to give the illusion of a desired shade.

My first reaction was the obvious "big deal," but the difference between 262,144 true colors and the million plus is supposedly "crippling" for video and picture editing because the lack of smooth colors.

The lawsuit mentions that the 27-inch iMac is not affected by the color differential, which is mighty peculiar. As stated earlier, the problem lies with the monitor, so why would Apple use such different monitors for the 20-inch and 27-inch iMacs?

Wouldn't it be great if Apple mailed 737,856 color swatches to Sanders. Despite being April Fools, I don't think Apple has that kind of a sense of humor.

[Rasputin]

Will Microsoft Deliver Windows 7 Next Year?

Microsoft has dropped two strong hints in the past two days that the next version of its Windows operating system will arrive in 2009, shaving up to a year off previous expectations.

It could also be a signal that Microsoft intends to cut its losses with Windows Vista, which has been poorly received or shunned by customers, especially large companies.

Microsoft has long said it wants to release Windows 7 about three years after Vista, which was released to manufacturing in November 2006 but not officially launched until January 2007. Given Microsoft's recent track record - Vista arrived more than five years after XP - most outsiders had pegged some time in 2010 as a safe bet for Windows 7's arrival.

But News.com reported Friday that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates answered a question at a business meeting in Miami about Windows Vista by saying "Sometime in the next year or so we will have a new version."

And during its announcement Thursday that it would extend the availability of Windows XP Home for low-cost laptops, Microsoft said it would retire the operating system only after June 30, 2010, or one year after the release of Windows 7, whichever comes later.

That implies that Microsoft is targeting the middle of next year for some sort of release milestone for Windows 7 - the only codename known at the moment - though whether that would be a final release to consumers or an RTM, which allows businesses and OEMs to start installing it, is unknown.

A Microsoft spokeswoman, in an e-mail, said the company "is in the planning stages for Windows 7 and development is scoped to three years from Windows Vista Consumer GA." She said the company was providing early builds of the new operating system to gain user feedback, but otherwise was not providing further information.

Gates also said that he was "super-enthused about what [Windows 7] will do in lots of ways" but didn't elaborate.

What could those be? Microsoft has divulged a few things. Responding to criticism that Windows has become unnecessarily bloated, the company has 200 engineers developing a slimmed-down kernel called MinWin that uses 100 files and 25MB, compared to Vista's 5,000 files and 4GB core and is so small it lacks a graphical subsystem.

Microsoft has also confirmed that the operating system will come in consumer and business versions and in 32-bit and 64-bit editions.

Screenshots of early betas of Windows 7 are also appearing. Blogger Paul Thurrott yesterday put up screenshots from build 6519 of Windows 7 released in December, which he said looks like "a slightly enhanced version of Windows Vista."

Microsoft needs to start generating excitement about its software months or years in advance in order to prepare its millions of reselling partners.

But if it talks up Windows 7 too much, it runs the risk that large companies -- Microsoft's most profitable customer segment -- will hold on to their Windows XP machines and skip Vista entirely in favor of Windows 7.

That appears to be happening. A recent enterprise survey by Forrester Research Inc. showed that only 6.3% of enterprises were running Vista at the end of December, with most of the upgrades coming at the expense of aging machines running Windows 2000, not XP.

The vast majority of the 100 million copies of Vista that Microsoft has sold so far have gone to individuals and small businesses purchasing new PCs.

The least-loved version of Windows has long been Windows Millennium Edition (ME), a buggy minor upgrade that was superseded by XP within a year of its release. Despite its far greater - some would say, too great - technical ambition, Vista may end up lumped together with ME as one of the blips on Windows' long-term roadmap.

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Delays Release of Windows XP SP3

Microsoft has delayed the release of a third service pack for Windows XP, blaming a "compatibility issue" between the software and a retail-chain-management application.

Microsoft had said last week that it completed development on Windows XP, Service Pack 3 (SP3), and that it would be available via its software-update services on Tuesday. However, incompatibilities discovered in the past several days between an application called Microsoft Dynamics RMS and both Windows XP SP3 and Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will force the company to hold off on releasing the software. Dynamics RMS is a retail-chain-management software for small and mid-sized businesses.

Microsoft said it is putting filtering in place to prevent its Windows Update service from offering both service packs to systems running Microsoft Dynamics RMS. Once that filtering is in place, Microsoft will release Windows XP SP3 to Windows Update and Download Center for users not running the application causing the problem. The company on Tuesday did not say how long putting in filters would take.

Microsoft is recommending that Microsoft Dynamics RMS customers not install Windows XP SP3 or Windows Vista SP1. For more information, those customers should contact Microsoft Customer Support Services, the company said.
A fix to the Dynamics RMS problem is being tested and "will be available as soon as that process is complete," Microsoft said. The company did not provide a time frame for completion of the testing and recommends customers visit its TechNet Forums for more information regarding Windows XP SP3.

[Rasputin]

Elude Your ISP's BitTorrent Blockade

I'm a fan of live music and a patron of online communities such as eTree.org, where music junkies swap copyright-free music. So I was stung when I recently tried to download a live recording of a Dave Matthews concert only to discover that my BitTorrent client was dead in the water.

My system and Net connection checked out fine, so paranoia immediately set in: Was my Internet service provider, RCN, blocking BitTorrent? I called RCN and the tech I spoke to confirmed my suspicions, telling me that the ISP had added BitTorrent to its list of prohibited programs because many people use the software to download copyrighted material. The fact that the concert I was trying to download was copyright-free didn't sway him.

Later I called RCN's press department as a reporter, and the story changed. The ISP's spokesperson told me that the customer support rep I had talked to earlier misspoke. RCN has never intentionally blocked peer-to-peer traffic, the spokesperson said, and it supports the principles behind Net neutrality. Within 24 hours, my bandwidth-related problems with BitTorrent vanished.

Of course, most people can't call their ISP and (honestly) identify themselves as professional journalists. But that doesn't mean you have no recourse if your ISP starts blocking your file-sharing activities. A number of tips and tools can help you determine whether you're facing a BitTorrent blockade and, if so, help you get around it.

Vuze, a company that makes peer-to-peer software and uses the platform to distribute content, published a study in April in which it concluded that all U.S. broadband providers--including AT&T, Cablevision Systems, Charter Communications, Comcast, Cox Communications, Qwest, Time Warner Cable, and Verizon--disrupt peer-to-peer traffic. Vuze asserted that these ISPs regularly send "false reset" messages to the Vuze software with the aim of slowing file transfers.

AT&T has flatly denied this claim. Subsequently, Vuze has softened its charge against ISPs, stating that "Our data collection was credible and transparent, but not conclusive," in the words of Jay Monahan, Vuze general counsel.

Other ISPs have acknowledged imposing some limitations on peer-to-peer traffic. Comcast first denied but now admits to interrupting access to file-sharing programs such as BitTorrent. Comcast executive vVice president David L. Cohen explained at a Federal Communications Commission hearing last February that disrupting BitTorrent traffic was a reasonable method of traffic management during busy usage periods.

Time Warner Cable spokesperson Alex Dudley says that his company takes reasonable steps to manage its network, including limiting bandwidth to applications such as peer-to-peer software.

[lovebeijgo]

fail at the ill

it is better to fight for good than to fail at the ill.

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Five Storage Strategies to Save Money

Storage costs eat up at least 11% of IT hardware budgets, but there are plenty of ways to save money without sacrificing performance or security. In a new report called "Five Key Storage Strategies for a Down Economy," Forrester analyst Andrew Reichman provides a road map for smart purchasing and maximizing the resources you already have. Here's a summary.

1. Play hardball with vendors. The storage market is highly competitive, but vendors also know that the cost of switching can be prohibitive. (Compare storage products.) This means your current vendor might have become complacent, particularly if you have been loyal for many years, expanding capacity without competitive bids, Reichman writes.

But as the economy gets worse, "storage vendors will be trying even harder to win new deals and protect their existing accounts from competitors trying to do the same thing," Reichman writes. "Use this situation to your advantage by introducing a fresh sense of competition among the vendors you work with." By undertaking a request for proposals bidding process, you can win discounts from your current vendor or discover a new, less-expensive vendor you weren't aware of.

2. Avoid new purchases by reclaiming what you have. Wasted storage, not surprisingly, is a waste of money. Storage is allocated but not used all the time for many reasons. "Some applications and operating systems don't lend themselves to gradual storage expansion over time; they require a large up-front allocation that may or may not be consumed eventually," Reichman writes. "This tendency for over-allocation combined with limited ability to effectively forecast data growth in most organizations leads to a significant gap in the amount of capacity that is allocated versus actually used."

Reclaiming wasted storage will often require application downtime, making careful planning necessary. Using storage virtualization is one way to migrate without disruption.

Other examples of wasted storage include: servers that have been taken off-line without its associated storage being returned to the free pool, and storage that's "'mapped but not masked,' meaning it has been allocated within the storage array but not recognized by a server."

3. Audit backup and replication configurations to cut waste. As important as disaster recovery is, the technologies that enable it sometimes lead to waste. "In a typical storage environment, there can often be as many as 10 copies of the same data -- several days of full backups, a couple of snapshots, and a fully replicated copy at the alternative site," Reichman notes. "Most backup systems have inadequate reporting capabilities, so it's difficult for storage administrators to associate applications to their backup jobs and their retention schedules."

An audit of backup policies and storage configurations can "eliminate unnecessary backup jobs, snapshots, clones and replication, and can return unused disk or tape media to the free pool to reduce future expenditure." Another strategy is to review replication levels to make sure the right amount of storage is being allocated to each application. This work can be tedious but can also be done internally and for little cost. (Compare data backup and replication products.)

4. Rethink storage network decisions. When you need high performance and availability, Fibre Channel isn't the only option. Alternatives that can sometimes provide both lower cost and meet performance needs include iSCSI, the Network File System (NFS) protocol, and direct-attached storage, Reichman writes.

Oracle and VMware are throwing "their hat into the NFS ring," he says, noting that more applications are supporting NFS as a way to connect servers to storage. Direct-attached storage is also a good alternative when the benefits of centralized networked storage are limited, such as when each storage device is dedicated to one application.

"While these options might not make sense for every application or every environment, cost-conscious firms should take a good, hard look at their storage network decisions and give some consideration to [these] approaches," Reichman writes.

5. Use a tiering methodology that delivers results simply. Every cost-control strategy requires an up-front investment of time or money, but for some the ROI happens quickly. Tiering, on the other hand, has to be viewed as a long-term strategy because you won't realize savings right away. For many users, the complexity of tiered storage has outweighed cost savings, but that doesn't mean it can't be effective.

"If tiering means buying a wholly separate platform in addition to the tier one infrastructure, it can take years to realize any benefit," Reichman notes. "By shifting investments you would already have made to lower tiers instead, you can realize cost avoidance."

Because of the down economy, more businesses are putting data on tier two storage right from the beginning, and only promoting it to tier one if the performance is unacceptable, he writes. "Buying cheaper, dense disks in the systems you already own makes sense for tiering without the added cost of a separate platform," Reichman writes. "Remember to keep it simple and consistent -- having too many tiers and options makes it hard to manage the environment, which can negatively impact cost savings."

[Rasputin]

UK to Respond to EU Soon Regarding Targeted Ad System

The U.K government expects to respond next month to a European Commission query regarding whether a targeted Internet advertising system violates European Union data protection regulations, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.

The Webwise system, from the company Phorm, tracks a person's online history in order to deliver targeted advertisements related to the content the person has viewed.

Targeted advertising platforms such as Webwise and NebuAd are under scrutiny by the U.K. and U.S. governments, which are concerned about how those systems handle personal information and impact privacy.

Last month, the Commission sent a query to the U.K.'s Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR). The department is currently consulting other U.K. agencies such as the Home Office and the Information Commissioner's Office, which oversees data protection issues, said a BERR spokeswoman.

The text of the Commission's query, sent by the Information Society and Media Directorate-General, hasn't been made public. BERR may decide to publicly release its response depending on interest, the spokeswoman said.

Webwise has come under fierce criticism from privacy activists who maintain that the system poses a data security risk. Phorm maintains the system protects Web surfers' anonymity while allowing ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to gain new revenue from online advertising.

The Webwise system attracted further controversy after it was revealed BT conducted trials of the system in 2006 and 2007 without informing users. Some campaigners are pushing U.K. law enforcement to investigate if the trials violated data protection regulations.

So far, the U.K. government has given Webwise the OK as long as users are required to opt in to the system. The Information Commissioner's Office said in April it will monitor BT's trial, while the Home Office has said the systems don't violate the law as long as Internet service providers obtain the consent of users.

BT said Wednesday it plans to conduct another trial soon, but did not specify a date. Virgin Media said it is still evaluating Webwise, while Carphone Warehouse could not be immediately reached.