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05/23/2013 01:29:44 Daily, February 13Is Unix In Trouble? Readers Say We're Asleep At The Keyboard
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In This Issue:
1. Editor's Note: Is Unix In Trouble? Readers Say We're Asleep At The Keyboard
2. Today's Top Story
- How To Avoid A St. Valentine's Day Malware Massacre
3. Breaking News
- FCC Starts Review Of Telephone Record Security
- U.S. Charges California Man In Botnet Case
- Intel To Ship Quad-Core Server Chip In '07
- Tiny High-Capacity HDs Coming For Mobile Phones
- Wearable Technology Can Save Lives
- VeriSign Unveils Authentication Network
- E-Payment Provider Hit With Denial-Of-Service Attack
- Test Of Net Neutrality
- A Pill, A Scalpel, A Database
- Invented In India
- Better Cell Signals Indoors Come At A Price
- Army Tries Fingerprint Matching To Catch Iraqi Insurgents
- Touch Once For Groceries
4. Grab Bag
- Company Implants RFID Chip Into Workers
- Congressman Proposes Law Keeping Servers Out Of China
- NY Team Confirms UCLA Tabletop Fusion
5. In Depth
- Microsoft Takes European Antitrust Case To The Public
- EU Fields Windows Vista Antitrust Concerns
- Microsoft Fixes Flag That Says Symantec Software Is Spyware
- Four Years Later, Microsoft Still Chases Trusted Computing
6. Voice Of Authority
- Oracle's 'All You Can Eat' Software
7. White Papers
- Monsters In Your Mailbox: E-Mail Liability, Compliance,
and Policy Management Risk
8. Get More Out Of InformationWeek
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Quote of the day:
"We confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no
large ones." -- Francois de La Rochefoucauld
A lot of feedback flowed into Information Week after our
Jan. 23 cover story, "What's Left of Unix." Most of the responses
offered full-bore support for Unix, as in, "Not meaning to be
harsh, but man ... wake up, guys!!"
"Like every other Linux/Unix story, you also failed," began Ed
Taylor, an independent consultant, 30-year IT veteran and former
CIO somewhere on the coast of North Carolina. "IBM, HP, and Sun
sell and support tons of boxes... And to think this was an 'In
Depth' article..." he wrote. Ouch.
Taylor and other writers have pointed out that Unix as an
operating system is not disappearing because of Linux. Linux is
Unix. "At no point in the article did you mention that Linux is
in fact a conformant implementation of Unix... It's only the
proprietary, closed-source Unixes that are having trouble," wrote
Dan Kegel, a senior engineer at Ixia Communications in Calabasas,
Calif.
An earlier version of the story referred to Linux and its "big
brother" Unixes, meant to suggest Linux' direct connection to the
more muscular and mature Unixes, but the relationship got lost in
the shuffle. It's still there later in the story, when we said,
"Solaris now shares with Linux the distinction of being the Unix
that runs best on Intel hardware." But this is a subtle statement
rather than a plain one. Mea culpa.
Then there's the writer, going simply by David, who points out we
didn't mention the new Apple Mac operating system is based on
Unix. "I think your article was a little uninformed... How, I ask
you, can you leave out OS X and Apple?"
"Not meaning to be harsh," he continued, "but man... wake up,
guys!! Trust me. I'm not a disgruntled Mac-head by any means, but
I DO know a massively growing technology base when I see it."
It's hard to argue with much of this feedback. When we asked,
"What's Left Of Unix," we were clearly addressing commercial,
data center Unix that still commands a handsome price tag.
Yes, Linux is a form of Unix that owes a great debt to its
predecessors, but Linux is something the older Unixes are not. It
is a Unix designed for common-denominator hardware. Linux is free
and the hardware on which it runs is cheap. A short while ago,
neither Unix nor the hardware on which it ran were cheap. Linux'
ability to run well on Intel hardware made it a preferred system
among developers who didn't happen to have an expensive
workstation in their basement. Linux grew from this foothold
among developers into a marketplace force and is now found in the
data center alongside the commercial Unixes.
Read the rest and leave your $0.02 on the InformationWeek Weblog.
Mitch Wagner
How To Avoid A St. Valentine's Day Malware Massacre
FCC Starts Review Of Telephone Record Security
U.S. Charges California Man In Botnet Case
Intel To Ship Quad-Core Server Chip In '07
Tiny High-Capacity HDs Coming For Mobile Phones
Wearable Technology Can Save Lives
VeriSign Unveils Authentication Network
E-Payment Provider Hit With Denial-Of-Service
Test Of Net Neutrality
A Pill, A Scalpel, A Database
Invented In India
Better Cell Signals Indoors Come At A Price
Army Tries Fingerprint Matching To Catch Iraqi Insurgents
Touch Once For Groceries
John Soat with "Week News" in the current episode of The News Show.
In the current episode:
Laurie Sullivan with "Linux Flight Plan"
Larry Greenemeier with "Big Little Things"
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Linux: Service And Support
-----------------------------------------
Company Implants RFID Chip Into Workers (Yahoo News)
Congressman Proposes Law Keeping Servers Out Of China (USA Today)
N.Y. Team Confirms UCLA Tabletop Fusion (Science Blog)
Microsoft Takes European Antitrust Case To The Public
EU Fields Windows Vista Antitrust Concerns
Microsoft Fixes Flag That Says Symantec Software Is Spyware
Four Years Later, Microsoft Still Chases Trusted Computing
Oracle's 'All You Can Eat' Software
Monsters In Your Mailbox: E-Mail Liability, Compliance, And
Policy Management Risk; Including An Enron Case Study
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InformationWeek Daily Newsletter
1. Editor's Note: Is Unix In Trouble? Readers Say We're Asleep At The Keyboard
mwagner@cmp.com
www.informationweek.com
Steer clear of some Web sites, unless your idea of romance is
spending some more quality time with your help desk staff.
The move comes amid pressure to clamp down on online data brokers
that offer to obtain and sell telephone subscriber information.
Christopher Maxwell, 20, was indicted on Friday for crippling
Seattle's Northwest Hospital with a botnet attack in January 2005.
The new chip, called Clovertown, bundles four processors in a
single package, allowing computers to process data more quickly
or run more applications at the same time, while using less power
than a single-core design.
Seagate's new drive sports a 23% smaller footprint than its
current 1-inch hard drive but has 50% more capacity.
A garment called LifeShirt contains tiny sensors that can
remotely monitor vital signs and 30 other important biometric
readings of patients.
Called VeriSign Identity Protection, the system lets consumers
use a single security device to authenticate themselves to any
VIP-enabled Web site.
StormPay.com's site was unavailable for several hours late
Thursday and most of Friday, an Internet performance-monitoring
company said.
Telecom companies want to change long-standing practices that
treat all network traffic equally. Businesses could face
application degradation -- or higher prices.
Health care is embracing IT to analyze a glut of medical data,
find new cures, and provide more-personalized treatment.
India isn't just for outsourcing. It's fast becoming a center of
strategic R&D and a growing market for tech products. Third of
three parts in the Inside India series.
A range of indoor wireless communications products delivers
cell-phone coverage inside buildings, giving employees,
contractors, and guests connectivity. Venture-capital investors
are convinced, pouring money into vendors, but there's still a
sizeable technology risk for IT managers.
Soldiers are carrying field kits they can use to collect digital
fingerprints and other physical evidence from battle sites.
Supermarket chain launches biometric fingerprint system to speed
customers through checkout lines
IT spending to reach 1 trillion by 2009, Microsoft to expand
headquarters, and more...
Linux Flight simulator is one of many new technologies on display
at the 4th Annual Southern California Linux Expo.
Report on the state of the nano-technology industry.
----- The latest research, polls, and tools -----
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Is Linux really a low-cost alternative to other operating
systems? Learn how more than 300 business-technology
professionals are planning to use Linux in their IT
infrastructure in this recent InformationWeek research report
Linux: The Impact of Service and Support. Use this report to
benchmark your company's initiatives for Linux.
4. Grab Bag: News You Need From Around The Web
Tiny silicon chips were embedded into two workers who volunteered
to help test the tagging technology at a surveillance equipment
company. The company, CityWatcher.com, provides cameras and
Internet monitoring for high-crime areas. It says it isn't using
the chip to track employees, but rather using them in lieu of
cards to control access to secure areas.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., is drafting a bill that would force
Internet companies including Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to keep
vital computer servers out of China and other nations the State
Department deems repressive to human rights.
Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a
tabletop accelerator that produces nuclear fusion at room
temperature, providing confirmation of an earlier experiment
conducted at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA),
while offering substantial improvements over the original design.
"Nuclear fusion has been explored as a potential source of power,
but we are not looking at this as an energy source right now,"
says Yaron Danon, associate professor of mechanical, aerospace,
and nuclear engineering at Rensselaer. "Rather, the most
immediate application may come in the form of a battery-operated,
portable neutron generator. Such a device could be used to detect
explosives or to scan luggage at airports, and it could also be
an important tool for a wide range of laboratory experiments."
As the company faces a key deadline on Wednesday, Microsoft has
some decisions to make about how to handle hearings, and how much
information to make public and when.
No formal complaints have been filed about Vista, but the
European Commission is monitoring the situation, a spokesman says.
Some users got error messages wrongly saying that Symantec
software was riddled with spyware and recommending users remove
the 'faulty' packages. Symantec and Microsoft are now working
together to help these customers.
When Bill Gates takes the stage this week at the RSA Conference,
he will outline how Microsoft will apply its magic formula of
usability and uniformity to the security functions that protect
its products. The main event: the beta of Internet Security and
Acceleration Server 2006, an edge security gateway designed to
work with Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint Servers to provide more
secure remote access to applications from PCs and mobile devices.
Stephanie Stahl says: Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison used the
Credit Suisse Global Software Conference to pick on the analyst
community's "obsession" with licensing revenue as a measure of
company health. "Every time I read a quarterly report I [see] the
all-important license revenue numbers as some sort of leading
indicator," he said. "Oracle is a mature software company. The
way to look at a mature company is different than an
up-and-comer."
A major study of potential problems, such as hostile work
environments, jokes, and explicit content, that can be caused by
inappropriate E-mail messages.
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