Has Desktop Linux Missed its Opportunity?

It's time we faced it: The Year of the Linux Desktop, long foretold, isn't coming.

Year after year, breathless pundits announce that the open source OS is on the verge of a tipping point, a critical mass that will see businesses abandoning Windows in droves. And year after year, nothing happens. Is it too late for desktop Linux to matter?

The issue isn't whether Linux is "ready for prime time." Modern desktop-centric Linux distributions -- including Mandriva, Novell Suse, Ubuntu, and Xandros -- have made impressive strides in aesthetics, usability, management, and hardware support. Major hardware manufacturers ship systems with Linux pre-installed, and Dell reports that customer satisfaction rates are just as high for the Linux models of its Inspiron Mini 9 netbooks as for the Windows models. Today's Linux really is reliable, polished, and full-featured enough for mainstream desktop use.

Even Microsoft admits it. After years of denial, the software giant's latest SEC filings acknowledge mounting competitive pressure from Linux, and not just in the datacenter. Addressing Microsoft investors in February, CEO Steve Ballmer went as far as to suggest that the open source OS could be a greater threat to Windows than Mac OS X. That same month, Microsoft began actively recruiting a director of open source desktop strategy, a position whose responsibilities will include "influencing multimillion dollar marketing campaigns."

Enterprises aren't buying the Linux promise, nor are vendors
Yet if Microsoft is willing to spend millions on desktop Linux, the enterprise plainly is not. Even given the backlash against Vista and uncertainty surrounding Windows 7, there has been no mass exodus. By Ballmer's own figures, the greatest threat to Windows remains unlicensed Windows, not Linux. In fact, according to research from Net Applications, Linux's market share has declined in recent months, despite the breakout success of low-cost Linux netbooks [11].

Meanwhile, leading Linux vendor Red Hat has "no plans" to deliver a mainstream desktop Linux distribution. At the recent Open Source Business Conference, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst admitted that he doesn't know how to make money on it. And even Novell, which markets a commercial desktop Linux distribution aimed at enterprise customers, says building a market for the OS among consumers will take years.

Source: PC World

Yahoo pulls plug on GeoCities

Yahoo is to close its personal web hosting site GeoCities later this year.

In a statement, the firm says it will no longer be accepting new customers and will focus on helping "customers build new relationships online".

Yahoo bought GeoCities for $3.57bn at the height of the dotcom boom in 1999.

At its peak, GeoCities boasted millions of active accounts, but it has since fallen out of fashion, with users migrating to social networking sites.

Yahoo says that existing GeoCities accounts will remain live for now, although it stresses that users should start looking for alternative sites.

"You don't need to change your service today, but we encourage anyone interested in a full-featured web-hosting plan to consider upgrading to our award-winning Yahoo! Web Hosting service," the firm said in an online post.

The closure of GeoCities spells the end of Yahoo's free hosting, although other services - such as e-mail accounts - remain unaffected.

Rupert Goodwins, editor of the ZDNet website, said the closure of GeoCities was the end of an era.

"I think GeoCities was the first proof that you could have something really popular and still not make any money on the internet.

"It was a fascinating experiment in the pre-industrial era of the internet, but after the initial exuberance on what the web could do, it turned out to be more complicated than just giving them free hosting.

"You need to give users tools to actually do things and make things simple, one of the reasons sites like Facebook and MySpace are so popular," he said.

Source: BBC

Apple Tops Expectations

Apple continued to defy the tough economy, reporting Wednesday that fiscal second-quarter earnings and revenue were its best ever for a non-holiday period.

Apple posted net income of $1.21 billion ($1.33 per share) on revenue of $8.16 billion for the quarter that ended March 31. That compares to earnings of $1.05 billion ($1.16) during the same period last year. Revenue in the same quarter last year was $7.51 billion.

"We're delighted to report 43 percent revenue growth and the strongest March quarter revenue and earnings in Apple's history," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a statement. "With over $17 billion in revenue for the first half of our fiscal year, we have strong momentum to launch some terrific new products in the coming quarters."

The strong showing easily beat analyst projections of $1.09 per share on $7.9 billion in revenue. Had the predictions proven correct, Apple would have experienced its first annual quarterly profit decline since 2003.

"Apple is performing very well and continues to grow year over year while many companies are declining," said analyst Brian Marshall of Broadpoint AmTech. "We think Apple is proving it's got the best model in consumer technology."

For the June quarter, Apple said it expects between $7.7 billion and $7.9 billion in sales, with earnings per share between 95 cents and $1. Apple's projections, which are typically conservative, fall well below analyst estimates of $8.28 billion in revenue with earnings of $1.12.

Apple said its gross margin was 36.4 percent, up from 32.9 percent in the same quarter last year. International sales accounted for 46 percent of revenue in the quarter.

The company's strong performance was driven by the sale of 11 million iPods, up 3 percent, and 3.79 million iPhones, which represent a 123 percent improvement over the year before. Apple also sold 2.22 million Macs during the quarter, a 3 percent decline from the same period in 2008.

IPod sales were boosted by the third-generation iPod Shuffle, which offers a smaller size, bigger capacity and a voice menu. Sales of iPhones were helped by the product's expansion into 81 countries. Despite a revamp of the Mac desktop line, Mac sales overall were down slightly, suggesting that the economy was affecting bigger computer purchases.

"Being the product with a higher selling price, (Macs) probably got more impacted than other products," said analyst Shaw Wu, of Kaufman Bros. "Apple also had a tough comparison with the Macbook Air, which came out last year and had a lot of excitement."

Apple's results are being closely watched as indicators of the health of the tech sector.

Apple watchers are also curious to see how the company holds up under the direction of Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, who has taken over day-to-day duties while Jobs is on medical leave. Apple executives reiterated that Jobs is expected back at the end of June.

Cook said he is pleased with Apple's results in light of the economy, which has hurt rival hardware manufacturers. Gartner reported this month that worldwide PC shipments in the first quarter declined by 6.5 percent compared with the same quarter in 2008.

"We feel great about our performance," Cook said. "It's a very solid performance especially in this environment."

Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with Global Equities Research, said Apple is well positioned to handle the economic storm because of the integration of its hardware, operating system, applications and cloud services. He said because Apple controls almost every part of its platforms and focuses on a limited number of products, it enjoys efficiencies and advantages that are helping the company stay ahead.

"Apple has a cost advantage, a time-to-market advantage, better products and faster innovation, which is helping in these economic conditions," Chowdhry said.

Apple hopes to continue the momentum with the release of the iPhone 3.0 operating system in the summer. Apple observers are also betting on a new iPhone model this summer and a smaller and cheaper notebook computer that will serve as Apple's answer to netbooks, the cheap laptops that are leading PC sales.

In after-hours trading, shares of Apple were up $3.39, or 2.79 percent, at $124.90.

Earnings skidded at eBay, but still topped analysts' expectations.

Source: SFGate

Windows 7: Linux-based OS Desktop Failure

The idea of a Linux-based operating system becoming a desktop success was a nice idea, but it was never going to happen. The Linux-based OS was installed on a number of Netbooks, but users found themselves asking for the Vista alternative. Now the upcoming launch of Microsoft’s Windows 7 looks set to add another nail in the Linux-based OS coffin.

Both Google and Linux have been doing all it can to try and take the market share away from Microsoft, but Windows is just too popular, and the upcoming launch of Windows 7 is not good news for Linux or Android and their idea of having a desktop success.

Windows Vista was not the greatest operating system, I still prefer XP, but Windows 7 is shaping up to be everything that Vista was not. You would have thought that a netbook running on Linux would have been more popular as it demands less of the hardware, but Microsoft was very clever with its pricing.

PC Magazine informs us that Microsoft only makes $15 per license on netbooks running Windows XP, that is not much profit, but it does guarantee one thing, Microsoft is using its deep pockets to win over users.

Source: Product Reviews

Adobe's Flash comes to TVs

From the PC to the TV, Adobe Systems wants to bring rich Web animation and video into consumers' living rooms.

The company will on Monday announce its latest version of its Flash multimedia platform that will essentially put its technology in Internet connected TVs, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, and other digital home devices. The main purpose of the TV and consumer electronics optimized Flash is to allow viewers to see high-definition video, interactive applications and new user interfaces right on their TVs.

As part of the announcement, the company revealed a number of partners that plan to use the technology, including, Intel, Comcast, Disney Interactive, Netflix, Atlantic Records, and the New York Times Company.

Until now, Adobe's Flash Player has mainly been used on computers to make animation and video from Web sites like YouTube available in a Web browser. And the company has been very successful in this market. About 80 percent of online videos worldwide are viewed using Adobe Flash technology, according to comScrore.

The company has also adapted its technology to create a mobile version of Flash that is used on smartphones. The mobile version lets people watch Flash-enabled video on the go. Now Adobe is turning its attention to the living room and big screen HD TVs. This means that people could have full access to the entire YouTube library of video on their TVs instead of a subset that has been specially encoded for TV viewing.

"There are some products and services that offer a subset of online video for TVs," said Anup Murarka, director of technology strategy and partner development for Adobe's Flash Platform Business Unit. "But they don't provide all the content. For example, a lot of devices play back YouTube content. But they can't offer all the videos on YouTube."

Developers will also be able to create "widgets" for TVs to help bring Web content onto the TV screen. Widgets are specially designed Web applications that can easily be added to consumer electronics devices.

Yahoo is also offering widget technology for TVs, which it co-developed with Intel. The Yahoo Widget Channel provides access to Flickr, Yahoo News, Yahoo Weather and Yahoo Finance, USA Today, YouTube, eBay and Showtime Networks, among others. Motorola, Samsung, and Toshiba are all planning to add Yahoo Widgets on some of their new TVs.

Murarka said that Yahoo is not really competing with Adobe. He pointed out that both Adobe and Yahoo are working with Intel, and he said the Flash technology was actually complimentary to what Yahoo is doing with its Widget Channel.

"Yahoo supports Flash on desktops and our hope is that they will support Flash in TVs as well," he said. "We see Flash valuable in a number of new frame works."

Murarka wouldn't say which consumer electronics makers plan to use the new version of Flash, but the technology is available to device makers and application developers now. And Flash-enabled TVs and set-tops should be out later this year.

Source: CNET

Mac Security III: The Rise of the Botnets

Malicious programs for Macs are rare and, even when they do show up, rather primitive. Well, they just became a little less rare and a bit more sophisticated.

A pair of researchers at the security software maker Symantec have found what may be the first successful Mac “botnet,” ZDNET reports.

A botnet is a group of computers — often home machines — that have been quietly infiltrated, commandeered and networked by attackers so they can be used to carry out any number of nefarious acts. This one has apparently been making denial-of-service attacks against an unnamed Web site, which means it has been hitting the site with tons of Web traffic in an effort to knock it out of service.

According to the Symantec researchers, the botnet has some sophisticated capabilities that suggest the work of an experienced programmer who may have rented out his creation to someone else who actually used it for denial-of-service attacks, a common pattern seen in botnets formed from Windows PCs.

Attackers created the botnet by seeding BitTorrent and other file-sharing sites with pirated software that contained a Trojan Horse. Some 20,000 Mac users had downloaded bad copies of Apple’s iWork 09 by the time Intego, a security software company that sells products for Macs, publicized its findings in January. Intego found a second version of the Trojan Horse a few days later inside copies of Adobe Photoshop CS4 for Mac.

This activity is still somewhat primitive, says Dino A. Dai Zovi, an independent security researcher and author of “The Mac Hackers Handbook.” “Trojaned pirated software is still an early phase in the rise of malware on a platform. But that means that more hostile attacks can’t be too far behind.”

Source: New York Times

Apple rises as PC falls

Shipments of desktop and notebook PCs in the United States were buoyed by the Netbook in the first quarter of 2009, but the overall shipments still fell 7.1 percent over the same period last year. Shipments of Macs remained fairly constant in both market share and shipments, according to a new report from market research firm IDC.

IDC says that Apple shipped 1,130,000 Macs in the first quarter of 2009, compared to 1,144,000 in the first quarter of 2008. Even though Apple saw a minimal decline of 14,000 computer shipments in the quarter, research shows that the company's market share actually increased over that time period.

Apple's market share rose from 7.4 percent in 2008 to 7.6 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to the IDC report.

HP, the PC shipment leader saw its market share rise from 23.8 percent in 2008 to 27.6 percent in 2009, with shipments going from almost 3.7 million to just over 4.1 million. Rival Dell saw its shipments fall from almost 4.7 million to 3.9 million as its market share fell four points to 26.3 percent.

Apple finds itself in fourth place for both market share and shipments of computers in 2009, which didn't change from 2008. HP leads the way, with Dell following close behind. Acer is one spot ahead of Apple with 10.5 percent market share.

Even though the market declined 7.1 percent overall, it did better than researchers predicted. The projected decline for the first quarter was 8.2 percent.

IDC says that falling pricing, including the Netbook, helped to minimize the decline of overall shipments.

Source: PC World

Linux Netbooks And Their Stumbling Blocks

First it was "the desktop." Now it's "the netbook" -- as in, what's the big proving ground for Linux vs. Windows going to be? And the latest hotly-debated bit of conventional wisdom is whether the Linux-based netbooks just don't cut it compared to their Windows cousins. The real problem seems to be who's willing to do more to bring regular users in.

Keir Thomas at ComputerWorld has his own take on the whole issue, in which he asserts that ordinary users run into too many little barriers with Linux-based machines to really stick with them.

What happens is that the software problems presented by Linux, combined with the hardware problems presented by smaller computers, push users over the edge. Pretty soon they've just had enough. They return their netbooks, and write off the concept as a bad idea.

If Windows is installed on their netbook, the user has a far easier ride. This isn't down to superior software. Far from it. This is quite simply because the software side of things is more familiar. They (or somebody they know) will be able to fix up the software side of things in a jiffy with just a few downloads. They just haven't got to worry about that side of things.

The reason they don't worry is because for a long time, Windows was the PC. If your PC had a problem, odds were it was a Windows problem, and so a whole culture of troubleshooting sprung up over years and then decades. Even most non-technical users now still can chant the "Did you defrag/reboot/clean the Registry?" mantra, because they've spent so much time hearing it from the very experts who came to their rescue.

Linux doesn't have this advantage. You aren't steeped in the Linux culture of how to fix things unless you've been running it yourself -- and on top of that, there's the fact that each Linux distribution often presents its own specific problems. Linux may represent choice -- and choices are great! -- but a choice that is in effect no valid choice at all (for all of the above-mentioned reasons and more) isn't one worth making, or even offering.

There is a solution to all of this, and it involves a degree of humility. The people making Linux distributions -- and open source in general, really -- have to be willing to go to the very non-technical community that they claim to want to win over. You have to go to them, not wait for them to come to you. Don't just put the software somewhere and expect people to come to them, but grab people from the street and perform usage testing and run focus groups and do all of the things that, yes, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) spent tons of money and time on.

What we need is an open source usability foundation -- an organization that can be hired or enlisted by an outfit that produces an open source product, and have that product rigorously tested against the very people they want to have using it. This would not be free -- this kind of effort costs money, there's no way to get around that -- but it would mean that many less experiences where designers second-guess, imitate (badly) or otherwise trip over their own feet when creating something that's meant to be used easily.

Who's up for that job?

Source: Information Week

Conficker's next moves

The controllers of the Conficker worm have begun sending malicious payloads to infected PCs, and they did not even have to get infected machines to successfully check in at 500 rendezvous points, randomly selected from 50,000 web domains. Readers will recall this was the new routine activated on April 1st. So much for the big debate about the significance of the phone-home routine.

“We did not detect any downloads at the 50,000 domains,” says Sophos researcher Richard Wang. “Therefore we believe an alternate means of introducing the update was used.”

The consensus among several top researchers is that its controllers took the easiest route available: they simply seeded instructions within Conficker's customized peer-to-peer network.

Conficker's creators went through a whole lot of trouble in early March to align Conficker-infected PCs into a proprietary, cloaked P2P network. This allows them to plant instructions on any machine in this P2P network. The networked PCs then begin to pass the instructions among themselves, cleaving through most corporate intrusion detection systems. This is similar to how people share pirated music and movies via popular P2P nets such as eDonkey and BitTorrent.

Instructions recently spotted traveling across Conficker's P2P net do a couple of things. First, they reactivate the worm's sophisticated battery of self-propogating routines, which were shut down in early March. Also, the worm now takes several new steps to hide its tracks better. Finally, Conficker has begun a campaign to generate revenue. The bad guys used the P2P net to install a copy of the Waledac spamming worm, says F-Secure researcher Patrik Runald. This version of Waledac, in turn, issues fake antivirus pitches for “Spyware Protect 2009″ to display on infected machines, says Runald.

Symantec researcher Eric Chien adds; “The user will see a pop-up window appear that will seem to scan the user’s machine. Then a ‘Windows Security alert’ icon will appear, advising the user that his or her machine is infected with multiple fake threats. When the user selects to remove the threats, it will then request you purchase the software. This will redirect you to a Web site to purchase the software for $49.95.”

Kaspersky Labs has a helpful breakdown of this particular strain of fake antivirus sales pitch here.

One thing Conficker does not do, at least not yet, is steal data, as suspected by officials at the University of Utah, who just discovered 700 Conficker-infected PCs. No keystroke loggers have yet been spotted by the dozens of top virus hunters closely tracking Conficker traffic.

Source: USA Today

Microsoft to patch 5 critical holes

Microsoft on Thursday said next week's Patch Tuesday would include eight patches, five of them critical, including one addressing a vulnerability in Excel.

A company representative declined to confirm whether the patch for its spreadsheet software addresses a vulnerability that has seen "zero-day attacks" which target unpatched security holes. But given the fact that both that Excel vulnerability and the Excel patch slated for Tuesday affect Microsoft Office 2000, 2002, 2003, and 2007, as well as Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008 for the Mac, it could be the same weakness.

Security firm Symantec said in February that it had discovered malicious files in the wild in Japan that attempt to exploit the Excel Unspecified Remote Code Execution Vulnerability. The attack requires a computer user to open an attachment sent via e-mail that has a maliciously crafted Excel document.

Also on Tuesday, Microsoft will provide updates addressing critical remote code execution vulnerability in Internet Explorer, Windows, and Office, and less severe vulnerabilities in Windows and Microsoft's Forefront Edge Security.

Affected software includes IE 7, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Server 2003, and Server 2008, according to Microsoft's advance-notification bulletin, released on the Thursday before every Patch Tuesday, which is the second Tuesday of the month.

Source: CNET

Conficker Worm Active

The Conficker worm, believed to have burrowed into millions of computers around the world, has sent an encrypted data message to infected machines, according to a computer security firm.

Trend Micro said the purpose of the mysterious update, sent to other infected machines using peer-to-peer (P2P) file transfer software, was not immediately clear.

Ivan Macalintal, a Trend Micro advanced threats researcher, said Conficker began showing activity on Tuesday, nearly a week after the expected April 1 activation date that had computer security experts on alert around the world.

"As expected, the P2P communications of the Downad/Conficker botnet may have just been used to serve an update," Macalintal wrote in a post late Wednesday on the TrendLabs Malware blog. "The Conficker/Downad P2P communications is now running in full swing!"

Macalintal said the worm was connecting to MySpace.com, MSN.com, eBay.com, CNN.com and AOL.com to detect whether a host computer is connected to the Web.

After performing the test, it deletes any traces of itself in the infected machine, he said, adding that it is scheduled to stop running the test on May 3.

"It runs and deletes all traces, no files, no registries etc," he said.

The worm remains present on an infected machine, however, and could be activated at a later date.

Trend Micro is monitoring the worm on an infected computer as part of the Conficker Working Group of security experts.

A task force assembled by Microsoft has been working to stamp out Conficker, also referred to as DownAdUp, and the software colossus has placed a bounty of 250,000 dollars on the heads of those responsible for the threat.

The worm, a self-replicating program, takes advantage of networks or computers that haven't kept up to date with security patches for Windows.

It can infect machines from the Internet or by hiding on USB memory sticks carrying data from one computer to another.

Conficker could be triggered to steal data or turn control of infected computers over to hackers amassing "zombie" machines into "botnet" armies.

Microsoft has modified its free Malicious Software Removal Tool to detect and remove Conficker. Security firms, including Trend Micro, Symantec and F-Secure, provide Conficker removal services at their websites.

The tell-tale signs that a computer is infected includes the worm blocking efforts to connect with websites of security firms providing online tools for removing the virus.

Source: AFP

Linux Expected to Thrive

Virtualization, cloud computing, and adoption by startups will make Linux the fastest-growing operating system, post economic downturn, report says.

Linux advocates, such as Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst, are fond of saying the open source operating system will thrive in a downturn. IDC analyst Al Gillen went a step further Wednesday, saying Linux revenue growth will seem less than spectacular during the downturn because much of its increased use will take place as free guests running on virtualized servers.
But as the economy recovers, the business uses seeded by that growth will make Linux revenue the fastest-growing operating system segment in the marketplace.

"The economic disruptions impacting the market today are affecting all market segments, including the Linux ecosystem. Linux has experienced a reduction in growth of software spending," Gillen said in a talk before 400 attendees at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. When combined with a falloff in revenue from servers to run Linux, the Linux "ecosystem" growth will amount to 9% in 2009, or less than IDC had projected.
Companies simply aren't investing in new initiatives. In the recession, they will "fall back on existing skills" to get them through a downturn, and part of those existing skills include more use of free Linux, he said.

Nevertheless, Linux will emerge as the fastest-growing operating system, post downturn, because of the underlying trends in the market. By 2013, IDC expects revenue from Linux software, servers, and services to equal about half those of the lucrative Unix market, or $35.5 billion versus $74 billion.

Linux will have grown to $35.5 billion from a base of $12.3 billion in 2008, with a compound annual growth rate of 23.6%. Unix will have grown to $74 billion from a base of $69 billion in 2008, with a compound annual growth rate of 1.8%.

Windows, on the other hand, will show the greatest revenue gain, thanks to its massive user base, even with a smaller compound growth rate of 6.6% than Linux. From revenue of $149 billion in 2008, it will grow to $206 billion in 2013, Gillen predicted.

But the trend toward virtualization and cloud computing both favor Linux in the long run, he said. Additional Linux servers are being commissioned under the Xen open source hypervisor or under VMware and Citrix System hypervisors to avoid expenditures on more hardware. Former single-application Linux servers are now hosting two to five virtual machines, Gillen said. "We believe cloud computing is a natural extension of the virtualization experience," especially for startups and small and medium-sized business. "Linux has great traction among cloud providers due to its low cost and customizability," he added.

The Linux Foundation, a vendor-sponsored consortium that organizes the summit, recently became host to the Moblin open source project. Jim Zemlin, executive director of the foundation, said the Moblin project will seek to make its Moblin 2 mobile operating system, based on Linux, a leading system for mobile Internet devices. It will compete with Windows Mobile, Symbian, RIM, and Google's Android systems.
"It's time to up the ante on Linux," Zemlin said in an opening address at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, urging developers to aim for the mobile platforms.

But in the background of the event, Linux advocates asked whether the operating system will have much of a future on one of the newly popular devices, the diminutive laptops known as netbooks. Linux started out as the operating system of choice on 30% of the netbooks, but Microsoft has claimed that Windows runs on 96% of them. "Some people are asking whether we blew it with the netbook," said James Bottomley, a key Linux developer known as a kernel subsystem maintainer.
But he said Linux was going to have a hard time gaining ground on a segment already dominated by Windows. "To me, the netbook is just another laptop," he said. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that Microsoft has lowered the price of Windows XP to $25 for each copy issued on a netbook.

Microsoft's Sam Ramji, former head of its open source compatibility lab and now senior director of platform strategy, gingerly addressed the fervent open source group, saying he wanted to see more cooperation between Microsoft and open source developers.

A woman in the audience stepped up to a microphone to ask him why Microsoft had run an ad campaign based on research that showed Linux was "uneconomical and unsafe."

"Are you willing to say before this group that Linux is economical and safe?" she demanded.

Ramji thought a minute. "Yes," he answered curtly, without uttering the words "economical and safe." The answer drew good-natured laughter and a few hoots. He added, "I'll say what I've always said. Linux is a strong operating system. There was an ad campaign infamous in this community that, when I took over, I ended."

Source: InformationWeek

Windows XP support due to expire

Mainstream support for XP comes to an end on April 14

Windows XP will pass another milestone on the road to retirement next week when Microsoft withdraws mainstream support for the operating system.

While the company said that it will continue to provide free security fixes for XP until 2014, any future bugs found in the platform will not be fixed unless customers pay for additional support.

Mainstream support for XP will end on 14 April 2009, over seven years after the operating system originally shipped.

However, the passing of the deadline will place Microsoft in the unusual position of no longer offering mainstream support for its most widely used product. Windows XP accounts for about 63 per cent of all internet connected computers, according to March 2009 statistics from Hitslink, while Windows Vista makes up about 24 per cent.

Windows XP also continues to be sold with low-cost mini laptops, otherwise known as netbooks, as Vista is too heavy on system resources for this level of hardware.

The key message, according to Microsoft, is that the company will continue to provide security support for XP users.

"We will provide critical security fixes via Windows Update for all editions of XP until 2014," said Laurence Painell, Windows marketing manager at Microsoft UK.

Microsoft's mainstream support includes problem resolution over the phone, and covers fixes for security and non-security related issues such as bugs and requests for changes.

Once Windows XP moves out of the mainstream support phase, customers will need an extended support contract with Microsoft or one of its channel partners to address any issues not related to security.

With a platform as mature as XP, this is unlikely to prove an issue, according to Microsoft.

"XP has been out a long time, so we would hope that there are not many issues that would require that level of support," said Painell.

Gartner analyst Michael Silver agreed, adding that he had not spoken to any companies planning to pay for extended support.

"The only thing extended support buys you is creation of new non-security fixes, at a hefty fee for each one. After all these years, most people figure that most of the functional bugs [in XP] are already worked out," he said.

In the past, most customers would already have moved to a newer platform before this deadline arrived. But because there was such a long gap between XP and Vista, customers have had only a couple of years to make the transition.

Many customers have also chosen to skip Vista and go straight to Windows 7, once this becomes available. Microsoft said that companies now have an opportunity to look at their options for a transition away from XP.

"Windows 7 is built on the same core architecture as Vista, and we provide a number of tools and applications to help companies understand any problems they might face," said Painell. He reiterated that customers can use Vista or the Windows 7 beta as test platforms for planning a migration to the forthcoming platform.

Meanwhile, Microsoft revealed that, while Windows 7 users will be able to downgrade to Windows XP, the reverse will not be true.

Microsoft said in its Engineering Windows 7 blog that XP users will have to perform a full install.

"There are simply too many changes in how PCs have been configured (applets, hardware support, driver model etc) that having all of that support carry forth to Windows 7 would not be nearly as high quality as a clean install," the blog entry said.

Source: vnunet

Microsoft: Free Windows 7 upgrades to XP downgraders

Free or discounted upgrades will also apply to PCs with factory-installed XP, says TechARP.com

Microsoft Corp. will provide free or discounted Windows 7 upgrades not only to users who buy Vista PCs between June 2009 and January 2010, but also to people who buy systems that have been factory-downgraded to Windows XP, according to a report on the Web.

TechARP.com, a Malaysian Web site that earlier this year leaked Microsoft's upgrade plans, said Saturday that users who purchase PCs equipped with a Windows XP downgrade will also be eligible for the "Windows 7 Upgrade Option" program.

In Microsoft's terminology, "downgrade" describes the Windows licensing rights that let users of newer versions replace the operating system with an older edition without having to pay for another license. In effect, the license for the newer Windows is transferred to the older edition.

The inclusion of new PCs running Windows XP shouldn't come as any surprise, since by definition, those systems also come with a license for Vista. "Unlike actual Windows XP installations, [these PCs] come with a Windows Vista COA (Certificate of Authenticity) and are therefore eligible for the upgrade program," said TechARP. "Hence, users with Windows XP downgrade licenses can upgrade to Windows 7."

Because Microsoft allows downgrades only from Vista Business and Vista Ultimate, the free or discounted upgrades to Windows 7 will be for Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Ultimate, respectively, claimed TechARP.

One caveat: Windows XP users will not be able to do an in-place upgrade to Windows 7, as can people running Vista. Instead, XP owners will have to do a clean install of Windows 7 that overwrites the hard drive's contents.

Computer makers will be allowed to start shipping the Windows 7 upgrade media to customers when Microsoft announces the general availability of the new operating system.

As with the Vista Express Program, a similar marketing effort that offered free or discounted upgrades to Vista to people who purchased an XP-equipped machine during the three months leading to Vista's launch, PC makers will be allowed to set their own pricing for the Windows 7 upgrades. Three years ago, PC makers charged a variety of prices for the XP-to-Vista upgrades. Hewlett-Packard Co., for example, gave away the upgrades, but others, such as Dell Inc., charged users $49.

According to TechARP, new PCs purchased between June 26, 2009, and Jan. 31, 2010, with a downgrade to XP Professional Service Pack 3 (SP3) will be eligible for a free Windows 7 upgrade. The site also said that XP users will be able to run Windows Easy Transfer from the Windows 7 installation disc prior to upgrading; that utility will let users save files and some Windows settings to an external drive, such as a flash drive, then, after the hard drive is wiped and Windows 7 installed, migrate those files and settings to the new operating system.

Although Microsoft has not committed to a delivery date for Windows 7, last month the company inadvertently revealed that it will post a release candidate next month.

Microsoft was not immediately available for comment on Monday, but it has previously declined to comment on reports of its Windows 7 upgrade offers.

Source: Computer World

FTC to regulate viral marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing is not exempt from the laws of truthful advertising.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is planning to regulate online viral marketing that uses blogs and social networking sites.

Marketers are spending billions worldwide to get the endorsements of key bloggers and groups on social networking sites. One tactic, used by Microsoft and others, is to send products to bloggers on 'long-term loans' on the understanding that they will comment about them on their sites.

Under the new regulations being proposed, such bloggers would be legally liable if they make untrue statements about the products or services. The companies too would face sanctions.

"This impacts every industry and almost every single brand in our economy, and that trickles down into social media," Anthony DiResta, an attorney representing several advertising associations, told The Financial Times.

This is the first revision of the rules on this kind of advertising by the FTC since 1980 and is needed, according to the organisation, because new forms of communication have opened up new fields to marketing.

"The guides needed to be updated to address not only the changes in technology, but the consequences of new marketing practices," said Richard Cleland, assistant director for the FTC's division of advertising practices. " Word-of-mouth marketing is not exempt from the laws of truthful advertising."

Advertisers are resisting the changes, however, which threaten a highly effective form of marketing new products and services.

"Regulating these developing media too soon may have a chilling effect on blogs and other forms of viral marketing, as bloggers and other viral marketers will be discouraged from publishing content for fear of being held liable for any potentially misleading claim," Richard O'Brien, vice president of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, said in an advisory to the FTC.

Source: vnunet

I noticed you skipped Windows 2000

A lot of people in the IT Professional realm and even some consumers consider Windows 2000 Professional to be Microsoft's best Windows release to date. The fact that you skipped it shows that you are biased in your views. In what way was Windows 98 a dud? It was a well received update to Windows 95 that generated the mid-night madness buzz similarly to its predecessor. Yes, there were some hiccups with shutdown issues, but it still innovated introducing the major successful Internet Explorer 4, Windows Update, improved navigation and DVD hardware support to mention just a few. The only release of Windows I can think of not being Microsoft's best work to date is Windows ME. Then again, it wasn't as bad as some would thing. It also innovated, introducing technologies like System Restore, File Compression, multimedia features like Windows Movie Maker and an improved HTML help system.

Windows Vista is not a failure either, I look at it similarly to Windows 2000 which introduced major stability improvements to carry the Windows platform forward, releases such as Windows XP benefited from that engineering tremendously and its success is a testament to that. Windows Vista did a reset in areas such as security, furthered stability, improved subsystems for graphics and communications that developers will take advantage for the next 10 to 15 years and will begin to reap with Windows 7. Unfortunately, the reset from August of 2004 kind of built up a negative reputation. The ambitions of it were not well thought out, they were noble though. It was just too much on one plate, being built on Windows XP's code base. Third party developers got frustrated with the many changes during development and didn't start doing any heavy lifting until the product was actually released.

This left a negative impression on early adopters of the OS in early 2007. A lot which was resolved in the first 6 months, but first impressions last. With the 24/7 news cycle, blogs and forums it kinda fanned the flames that further damaged Vista's image. This would not have happened in 2001, because the level of exposure did not exist then, the Windows enthusiast mania was not at its present height. All of these things affected Vista. But does it mean the OS is bad? Nope, absolutely not. Windows 7 has changed this and the early rave reviews are a good sign. As for Linux, you say it has been consistent, well, I don't consider over 200 distributions, incompatibility with a wide range of hardware and software, lack of support from the industry, complexity in setup, package management, two different GUI environments, with different UI philosophies as being consistent, more like sporadic.

So, before you discredit Windows and predict its demise, just remember, its probably the OS that gave you your job right now and its the same platform that has built this lucrative industry so many of us take for granted.

Source: ZDNET

Comcast email access goes down

Comcast e-mail customers: No, it's not just you.

Comcast e-mail servers are experiencing an outage, according to the company's Twitter feed. The ETA for a fix has come and gone.

(Credit: Comcast) Users of the company's e-mail service have been out of luck accessing the service since "at least" 6 a.m. PT, according to an e-mail tip received by CNET News on Saturday.

Although Comcast did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the matter, its Comcastcares Twitter feed, as well as its Comcast.net service hub, did confirm the outage, which apparently is related to on-and-off difficulties at an external "server company."

While a fix was previously expected at 11 a.m., according to the Twitter feed, e-mail servers are still down.

Source: CNET

Why Linux will oust Windows

Despite the positive buzz generated by Windows 7, it is only a matter of time before Linux takes its rightful place at the top of the operating-system pile, says Jack Wallen.

Microsoft's failings are finally catching up with it and will cause the once-unstoppable juggernaut to cede to Linux. A key event was 14 September, 2000, when Microsoft set a tiny snowball rolling with the release of the deeply flawed Windows Me. That snowball has been gaining momentum, despite some ups and downs along the way — XP was an up, for example.

In many respects, the public mood has already shifted against the operating system that was once considered the heart of personal computing. Here are 10 reasons why that shift has taken place:

1. Inconsistent Windows releases
One of the things you can always count on is that you cannot count on new Microsoft operating systems to be reliable.

Let's look at the individual releases:

Windows 95: Revolutionised personal computing
Windows 98: Attempted to improve on Windows 95, but failed miserably
Windows Me: A joke, plain and simple
Windows NT: Attempted to bring enterprise-level seriousness to the operating system. Would have succeeded had it not taken Stephen Hawking-like intelligence to get it working
Windows XP: Brought life back to the failing Windows operating system; not since Windows 95 had the operating system seemed this simple.
Windows Vista: See Windows Me

With this in mind, what do we expect from Windows 7? Not much, in my view.

2. Consistent Linux releases
Contrasting with those problems with Windows versions, the various Linux distributions have been far more consistent. Of course, there have been a few dips along the way — Fedora 9 was one of them. But for the most part, the climb for Linux has been steadily upward.

Nearly every Linux distribution has improved with age. And this improvement is not limited to the kernel. Look at how desktops, end-user software, servers, security and admin tools have all improved over time. Once could easily argue that KDE 4 is an example of a sharp decrease in improvement. However, if you look at how quickly KDE 4 has improved from 4.0 to 4.3 you can see nothing but gains. This observation holds true for applications and systems across the board with Linux.

3. Continuing Windows price hikes
Recently, I have had a number of long-time Microsoft administrators asking my advice on solid replacements for Exchange. The reason? Microsoft changed its licensing for Exchange.

Now anyone who logs on to an Exchange server must have a licence. You have 100 employees, including administrators, who need to log on to Exchange? Pay up. This charging really starts to mount up when your company has 500-plus Exchange licences.

The very idea of making such a significant change to licences is particularly ridiculous given the state of the economy. Companies worldwide are having to scale back. And like ExxonMobil celebrating record profits amid the catastrophe known as Hurricane Katrina, Microsoft creating such a cost barrier while the globe is facing serious recession is reprehensible.

4. Consistent Linux costs
Again, in contrast to the previous point, the cost of open-source software licences has remained the same — zero. When those administrators come to me asking for open-source replacements for Exchange, I point them to EGroupware and Open-Xchange. Both are outstanding groupware tools that offer an even larger feature set than their Microsoft equivalent. Both applications are reliable, scalable, secure and free.

The only outlay you will have with either application is for the hardware to install them on. And with both packages, there is no limit to the number of users.

5. Windows hardware incompatibility
Microsoft Vista was a nightmare for hardware compatibility. Not only was Vista incompatible with numerous peripherals, it took supercomputer-level iron to run the operating system.

Clearly, this was a boon to Intel, which stood to make a pretty penny from the operating system. Intel knew some of the public would be shelling out for new hardware, and the new hardware would cost more becauseit had to be faster to run Vista in all its Aero glory. But even hardware that would run nearly any other operating system very quickly was brought to a slow, grinding halt with Vista.

6. Linux hardware compatibility
Again, in contrast with Windows, Linux continues to advance in hardware compatibility. Take X.Org, for example. Recent developments with this star Linux graphical desktop allow the X Windows server to run without the xorg.conf file used for configuration.

This measure was taken primarily because the system had grown so good at detecting hardware. So long as there was no cheap KVM (keyboard, video, mouse) unit between your monitor and your PC, X.Org would easily find the mode for your display and run X properly. With new distributions, such as Fedora 10, X configuration is becoming a thing of the past.

7. Windows promises
We have all heard the pundits proclaiming Windows 7 will lead to a resurgence of the Microsoft operating system. But I recall that this same prediction was made for nearly every release from Microsoft.

Windows Vista was going to revolutionise the way the user interfaced with the computer. Vista was going to be the operating system you would never notice. Instead, Vista refused to take a back seat. And Windows Me was going to take Windows 98 and make it far simpler for the average user. What did it really do? Remove nearly every functioning system in the operating system, leaving little more than a browser and an email client.

The public has finally reached such a level of apathy with Microsoft that most people are probably unaware of an impending launch. The media can continue to push Windows 7, but many people will continue to use XP until Microsoft pries it from their cold, dead fingers. And of course no-one really knows when Windows 7 will land.

8. Linux transparency
The next release of any Linux distribution is never shrouded in mystery. Because of the nature of open source, the release candidates are always available to the public — not on a limited basis — and the timeline is always made available.

Any user can know exactly when a feature-freeze happens for a release of any distribution. And all Linux distributions work under the full-disclosure model. Because of this fact, there is little false advertising going on with Linux. And you will never hear of a distribution claiming that its next release will revolutionise computing.

If you go to the Fedora Project Wiki, you can view all the proposed and accepted features that will be included in the next release. You can also view the completed release schedule, where you will see that Fedora 11 has a final release of 26 May, 2009. Such dates are fairly firm and almost always on target.

9. Feature comparison
Let's compare the feature lists of Windows 7 and Fedora 11.

Windows 7: OS X-like docking; multi-touch screen; mapping application similar to Google Earth; hypervisor virtualisation; location-aware apps; user-access control improvements; sidebar removal
Fedora 11: Boot time of 20 seconds; Btrfs file system; better C++ support; Cups PolicyKit integration; DNS security; ext4 default file system; fingerprint reader integration; Ibus input method replaces Scim to overcome limitations; Gnome 2.26; KDE 4.2; Windows cross-compiler inclusion

Looking at those features, both lists look impressive. But the Fedora 11 features are added to an already outstanding operating system. Microsoft is proclaiming multi-touch to be the biggest improvement, but it does not improve the operating system, and it also requires new hardware.

10. Hardware requirements
Microsoft says Windows 7 will run on any hardware that would run Vista — and even on slightly less powerful hardware. Slightly less powerful? What exactly does that mean? Well, Windows 7 will have no luck in the netbook market. And since XP is dying, the netbook market will be owned by Linux.

Netbooks are not gaining enough power to run anything from Windows but the watered-down version of XP. Netbooks are not going anywhere, and home and corporate consumers have limits to how many hardware upgrades they will make to fulfil an operating system's needs. As to Fedora 10, the minimum system requirements look like something from the mid-1990s.

Your take
In your opinion, has the court of public opinion already condemned Microsoft to failure or will Windows 7 pull Microsoft out of the mire created by Vista? Will Linux continue its climb above Microsoft?

Source: CDNET

Time for Web 2.0 to wake up!

Tom Foremski of Silicon Valley Watcher suggests that "you aren't are missing anything if you couldn't make it" to Web 2.0 Expo. That may be a bit strong, but one thing seemed to be almost entirely missing from the show: money.

Yes, there were plenty of sponsors spending money on the conference. There just wasn't much emphasis in the conference program itself on actually making Web 2.0 profitable for more than just Google, despite an entire track dedicated to Web 2.0 business models.

The one session, other than mine, that focused on the topic was somewhat apologetic about even having to raise the issue: "Why Sales Shouldn't Be a Dirty Word in Web 2.0."

Sales? A dirty word? How do these companies expect to exist long enough to be acquired? And while the good old days saw Web 2.0 companies bought based on their page views alone, the reality is that not many Web companies are going to be able to acquire money pits forever. Only so many companies can afford to acquire a YouTube and have it bleed mountains of cash.

Ironically, the open-source world, which has been criticized in the past for not making its advocates enough money, is now firmly focused on minting money, and it's doing a pretty impressive job of it. Red Hat, the biggest open-source company, notched more than $659 million in revenue in its last fiscal year, but Red Hat is no longer alone in making money with open source.

My own company, Alfresco, announced 103 percent year-over-year revenue growth (on a very significant base). Open-source ad server company OpenX delivered 400 percent growth in its ad-serving business. Pentaho and others have also announced significant growth, even as the economy contracts.

Web 2.0 has a lot to learn from open source. There are plenty of principles common to both (e.g., users add value, focus on adoption before focusing on sales), but there's one principle that Web 2.0 companies need to adopt immediately: users are nice, but customers are critical.

Source: CNET

Google Linux desktop is a giant step closer

Google still isn't saying publicly that they're going to deploy Android as a desktop Linux, but HP, ASUS, and other major computer makers are apparently in talks with the company about deploying Android on netbooks

According to a Wall Street Journal report, Satjiv Chahil, a vice president in HP's PC division, declined to comment on whether the world's largest PC maker will sell either netbooks or smartphones running Android but confirmed that HP is "studying" the free operating system.

Woo-Hoo!

We already know that Android will work as a desktop operating system, because it's already been done. And, it was done not by some hackers whose second language is C++, but by a pair of journalists. If we can do it, anyone can do it. :-)

The usual response to the idea of a desktop Linux from Ubuntu, Novell or Red Hat or anyone else is a loud cry of 'nonsense,' from the Windows crowd. Android, however, is different.

I can tell you what the differences are between Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora and half-a-dozen other Linux desktop variants off the top of my head. Let's be real, though, no one except a Linux enthusiast could do that. Most PC users might know that Linux is another operating system, and they might know that Red Hat is a big Linux company and that Ubuntu is a popular version of Linux. That's it.

But, Google, Google is different. Anyone who uses a computer knows Google. Someone who might be reluctant to try a PC running anything except Windows, and Windows XP by choice, might very well be willing to give a Google-powered netbook a try. Come to think of it, I wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if there are some people out there who think they already are running Google on their desktops.

Think about it. How do they find things on the Web? They 'Google' for it. The company name has already become a common verb in English and other languages. How do many people check their mail? They use GMail. What they do they check for news? They use Google News.

Going from this to using a PC that actually runs Google isn't much of a jump at all. Sure it will be the Google Android Linux desktop underneath it, but most people won't care about that anymore than they care about the Google's search engine's Linux underpinnings. All they'll know is that their netbook or laptop is running something by a name they already know and trust. And, since these computers will be based on Linux, they'll cost less than their brothers running Windows.

Earlier this year, I suggested that 2009 would be the perfect year for Google to take Microsoft head-on on the desktop. With this news that serious PC vendors are already tinkering with setting up Android-based netbooks, I'm now predicting it will happen in 2009.

Source: ComputerWorld