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The Linux Foundation is holding its first End User Summit beginning Monday in New York in an effort to bring Linux kernel developers in closer contact with users at Wall Street institutions and other major companies. 
"We're talking about a direct dialogue between the very highest-level Linux developers and the very highest-level Linux users," said Jim Zemlin, the organization's executive director. [ Track the latest trends in open source with InfoWorld's Open Sources blog. ] Right now, the latter group is likely working with the kernel community indirectly, he said: "Most very large, sophisticated users of Linux acquire it through a vendor that supports...
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Not all of this week's news involved global financial turmoil. While IT budgets are being cut and AMD is breaking itself up, a security tool was released for Firefox that prevents "clickjacking" and Microsoft said that Windows 7 will fix issues in Vista's user account control feature.
1. Economic malaise hits IT industry: Disappointing earnings from some IT companies, fewer initial public offerings, lowered earnings forecasts -- all are part of the grim global economic outlook. On the bright side, though, IBM reported this week that its net income rose 20 percent in its third quarter and maintained its profits will be strong for the...
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A new Forrester Research study that polled more than 200 SAP customers found widespread discontent over the vendor's recent decision to shift customers to a pricier Enterprise Support offering, and also provides tips on how customers can mitigate the increased cost.
SAP announced in July that Enterprise Support would replace its basic and premium support options. Enterprise Support costs 22 percent of a customer's license fees, compared to 17 percent for basic support. The additional costs will be phased in over the next few years, and new charges won't begin until Jan. 1. [ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test...
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The collective sigh of relief when Apple lifted the iPhone NDA, which had prevented developers from discussing iPhone programming, came not just from developers, but also from educators, authors, and publishers. With the NDA gone, iPhone-related books can be published, and conferences can be much more detailed, leading to better education.
Publishers and authors who had books written were forced to shelve them because publishing the material would have broken the guidelines of the NDA. However, with the NDA removed, users can expect to see an abundance of information hitting the market, targeting everyone from developers to end-users. [ Special report: IT's guide to the iPhone ]
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MSI is continuing its assault on the Eee PC by launching the Wind U120.
[ For more on products in the hot mini-notebook category, check out our hands-on looks at Asus' Eee PC 901 and 1000, the Cloudbook Max netbook, Elitegroup's G10IL mini-laptop, MSI's Wind low-cost laptop, Giga-byte's M912X mini-laptop, HP's Mini-Note netbook, and Acer's Aspire one. ] The U120 will feature similar specs to its predecessor, the Wind U100, which is powered by an Intel Atom processor. Customers will be able to choose between a 120GB hard-disk drive or a 40GB solid-state drive. The U120 also includes 802.11n Wi-Fi connectivity...
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Shedding more light on its Oslo vision for model-based software development, Microsoft this week elaborated on plans to preview Oslo technologies, offering code names and citing the company's DSL (Domain Specific Languages) concept as a lynchpin of the platform.
A Community Technology Preview of Oslo is due at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles on October 27. Featured in the CTP will be a declarative modeling language now being identified by the code name "M," as well as software modeling tool code-named "Quadrant. A repository for integration between models also will be part of the CTP. User feedback on the CTP will...
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The U.S. government is soliciting input on a way to make the Internet's addressing system less susceptible to tampering by hackers.
Under the idea, records in the DNS root zone would be cryptographically signed using DNSSEC (Domain Name and Addressing System Security Extensions), a set of protocols that allows DNS records to carry a digital signature. [ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ] The U.S. Department of Commerce is asking for comments through Nov. 24 on how DNSSEC could best be deployed. The root zone is the master list...
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The world's financial markets may be collapsing, but technology lives on -- for the moment, anyway. This week the feds arrested a suspect in the Sarah Palin e-mail hacking case, and both Steve Jobs and Windows XP got yet another lease on life. Also: new e-books, virtual worlds, and some truly wacky science. Are you up to speed on all things tech? Prove your geek street cred by acing this quiz. Correct answers are worth 10 points each, and no asking your artificial intelligence buddies for help. Ready?
1. Tennessee University student David Kernell has been charged with illegally accessing Sarah Palin's Yahoo e-mail account by changing...
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Amazon's AWS cloud computing subsidiary will institute a new tiered pricing structure for its hosted storage service that includes price cuts for high-volume customers.
Simple Storage Service (S3) has reached a level of usage, holding 29 billion objects and handling 70,000 requests per second, that allows AWS to bring down its rates, the company said Thursday. The new tiered pricing structure will kick in on Nov. 1. Customers aren't required to enter into contracts or commit to minimum fees, since S3 and other AWS services are billed per usage. S3 is currently being used by companies of all sizes for a variety of tasks,...
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Apple issued invitations Thursday for an event next Tuesday on its Cupertino, Calif., campus that will tout laptops.
"The spotlight turns to notebooks," the invitation sent to reporters read. The only other information Apple provided was its 10 a.m. PDT kickoff and driving directions to the building where the company will hold the event. [ Discover the key Mac and Apple tech trends for business users. Read InfoWorld's Enterprise Mac blog and newsletter. ] CEO Steve Jobs traditionally hosts such presentations. Bloggers and others have been talking up an Oct. 14 event for weeks, while analysts have been expecting Apple to...
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Microsoft plans to improve the much-maligned UAC (user account control) feature in the next version of its Windows client OS, acknowledging that the new security feature it built into Windows Vista has caused unnecessary problems for users.
On the company's Engineering Windows 7 blog, Microsoft called UAC one of the "most controversial" features of Vista and said it will tweak UAC in Windows 7 so it works more closely with Microsoft's intended goal for the feature. [ InfoWorld's Enterprise Desktop blogger Randall C. Kennedy says improvements like these are just milestones to nowhere for Windows 7 ] Microsoft added UAC to Vista in an effort to...
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Next week will be a busy one for system administrators as Microsoft is planning to ship 11 security updates -- four of them rated critical -- for its products.
The patches will include fixes for critical security bugs in Windows Active Directory, Internet Explorer, Excel, and the Microsoft Host Integration Server, which integrates Windows computers with IBM mainframes, Microsoft said Thursday in a note on the patches. [ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes' Security Adviser blog and newsletter, both from InfoWorld. ] The critical Active Directory bug affects Microsoft Windows 2000 Server, but not other versions of Windows,...
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A British startup is preparing to launch an enterprise version of a Web-based collaboration service with a screen-sharing feature that lets a person interact with an application on someone else's computer.
The company, called Yuuguu, means "fusion" in Japanese. It combines several collaborative features aimed at making it easier for employees to work on projects, hold online meetings and communicate, said Anish Kapoor, who founded the company with Philip Hemsted. [ Discover the top-rated IT products as rated by the InfoWorld Test Center. ] Yuuguu is entering a field with well-established competitors such as Citrix's GoToMeeting, Microsoft's Live Meeting and Cisco's WebEx. Yuuguu's...
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IBM on Wednesday reported a 20 percent increase in net income for its third quarter and said its profit outlook for the full year remains on track.
The preannouncement came one week before IBM is due to report its full financial results on Oct. 16 and may help calm technology investors, who have been pummelling stocks amid fears of a spending slowdown caused by the U.S. financial crisis. [ Learn more about how the financial crisis is affecting IT and the high-tech industry, plus what IT can do to help, in InfoWorld's special report. ] On Monday, software vendor SAP said concern about...
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A surge in demand for netbooks is helping drive business for Linux, as the devices are designed to be low-cost with smaller storage, according to Novell's chief technology and strategy officer for Linux.
"People typically don't care what operating system is on the netbooks, because they don't buy them to run a suite of applications like Microsoft Office, but to be on the Web using a Web browser," Nat Friedman said in an interview with IDG News Service. Novell's Suse Linux is already being pre-loaded with laptops from vendors including Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. The company is now in negotiations with Lenovo and HP to start offering its...
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