Glen White

Microsoft Corp.marketed i4i Inc.'s XML software to potential customers at the same time it planned to drive the small company out of business by infringing on its patent for the technology, according to court documents filed last week. Federal Judge Leonard Davis issued the injunction in August, barring Microsoft from selling Word 2003 and Word 2007 after Oct. 10. The decision came about three months after a Texas jury found that Microsoft had illegally used patented i4i technology to build XML features into its word processing software. In a brief submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal District in Washington, Toronto-based i4i argued that an injunction blocking Microsoft from selling current versions of Word should stand. The jury had awarded i4i $200 million, but Davis increased the amount to just under $300 million when he issued the injunction.

Earlier this month, the three-judge appeals panel decided to stay the injunction while it weighs Microsoft's appeal . I4i filed the patent infringement lawsuit in 2007. The new i4i brief charges that in 1991, "at the same time Microsoft was praising the improved functionality that i4i's product brought to Word, and touting i4i as a 'Microsoft Partner,' Microsoft was working behind i4i's back to make i4i's product obsolete." According to the brief, just days after a 1991 meeting in which Microsoft had sought to find ways to work with i4i, Microsoft executives discussed XML plans for Word that would eventually "make obsolete any competitive attempts by third parties to conquer that market." Microsoft must file its rebuttal to i4i's brief by Sept. 14; the appeals court is slated to hear oral arguments from the two sides on Sept. 23. Asked to comment on i4i's briefs, a Microsoft spokesman said, "We're looking forward to the hearing on the merits of our appeal." This version of the story originally appeared in Computerworld 's print edition.

A federal cybersecurity law edged closer to reality late last week when the Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill to protect the personal data of Americans. It's exactly what many security experts have been calling for - one federal law that would supersede the growing mountain of state data security laws and give enterprises a simplified, one-size-fits-all roadmap to work from. The bill is a bipartisan effort sponsored by Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and co-sponsored by former Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, that would, among other things, force companies and data brokers to institute data privacy and security programs. Also see Mass 201 CMR 17: A Survival Guide for the Anxious And yet, when asked if a federal law is a good idea Tuesday during a panel discussion on the seventh-annual Global Information Security survey, which CSO and CIO magazines conducted with PricewaterhouseCoopers (see survey results here), one attendee who happens to work for the federal government deadpanned, "Careful what you wish for." That seems to be the consensus among IT security pros these days.

But in a recent, informal and unscientific poll CSOonline conducted on LinkedIn, a majority of respondents expressed doubt that a federal law would make their jobs easier. True, the patchwork of state laws can indeed be confusing to companies looking for a one-size-fits-all approach to security compliance. If anything, they said, the opposite would probably be the result. Here's what four respondents said: Gregory Anderson, desktop security SEPM lead manager and wise application packager at Qwest CommunicationsI have no faith in the U.S. government to implement useful strategies and security measures that don't fall completely apart when political cowards take the reins. The question we asked in various LinkedIn forums was if a federal cybersecurity law was the right way to proceed. James McGovern, Hartford, Conn., chapter leader for the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP)One thing I believe is missing is that the government needs to acknowledge that while their security practice is probably more rigorous through the lens of process than their enterprise counterparts, they can learn something from enterprises in terms of community sharing of knowledge, ability to work under scenarios of smaller budgets and how to accomplish the job with less bureaucracy.

When was the last time a government CIO or enterprise architect ever traded notes with their enterprise peers? We don't need more enforcement, but collaboration. Good security requires understanding multiple perspectives and not thinking in such an insular manner. And, the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act isn't really about breaches but more about the legal and punishment aspects. Michael S. Black, manager of information security operations at Barclaycard U.S.Well, the Data Breach Notification Act has an exemption for data that "was rendered indecipherable through the use of best practices or methods, such as redaction, access controls, or other such mechanisms, that are widely accepted as an effective industry practice, or an effective industry standard." It doesn't really have any teeth, does it?

So we are left with PR and not a framework to increase security. David Robbins, director, systems development at the Taubman CompanyNo, it is not. It's something to let politicians thump their chest and say "We are working hard to help you," but it actually doesn't help the average person whose data gets stolen and resold, and has his credit destroyed. Powers not enumerated in the Constitution are relegated to the states or the citizenry. Assistance with oversight would probably be viewed in the same light - with frivolity. The feds have outsourced the production of many electronic components for our military, to the point where we may become crippled should an escalated conflict occur.

Breaches in security will have no consequences except when brought forth to a committee. How will this secure us? That's the Congress, the same people who vote on bills that they don't really read, or for that matter, bills that haven't been completely written. Will AT&T be under greater scrutiny, or will they buy off the politicians?

Apple's Mac sales in the U.S. last quarter were up between 7% and 12%, according to estimates published yesterday by research firms Gartner and IDC. Both companies said Apple will post third-quarter numbers significantly above the industry average, but disagreed on the Mac sales gains over the same period a year ago. In both cases, Apple's performance was higher than the industry average in the U.S., which IDC estimated was 2.5% and Gartner had at 3.9%. Apple will not release its official sales figures until Monday, when it will hold a conference call with Wall Street analysts. "Everyone is guessing at Apple's numbers," said Bob O'Donnell, IDC's vice president of clients and displays. "Here's the interesting thing. Gartner estimated that Apple sold 1.57 million Macs in the U.S. for the quarter ending Sept. 30, an increase of 6.8% over 2008. IDC, on the other hand, put Mac sales at 1.64 million, or 11.8% above last year. Last month we called Apple [sales] low, and we got it wrong.

A week later, however, Apple announced it had sold 1.64 million Macs in the Americas and at retail - the vast bulk of the latter also in U.S. stores - or nearly 2% more than the year before. I take full blame for that," O'Donnell admitted. "I thought, 'How can they possibly maintain share?' But they defy logic." In July, IDC estimated that Apple sold just 1.21 million Macs in the U.S. during the second quarter, which would have put the company down 12.4% year-to-year. Globally, Apple boosted Mac sales in the second quarter by 4%, to 2.6 million machines. "Their sales just seem to defy all logic," O'Donnell repeated. "There are obviously a certain number of people buying Macs even in the face of a recession." That's a refrain that most analysts have sung since September 2008, when PC sales began to slump. That was also the first time that Apple posted a year-over-year decline in sales since 2003. Burned last quarter, IDC gave Apple the benefit of the doubt this time, in part because of a turnaround in its analysts' thinking. "My sense now is that the same things that have driven them above industry average growth in the past are still there," O'Donnell said. In the last four quarters, Apple has had only one - the first calendar quarter of 2009 - when it sold fewer Macs than the year before.

According to IDC, Apple accounted for 9.4% of all U.S. computer sales in the third quarter, up from a 7.6% share of sales in the prior period. Both research firms had Apple in the No. 4 spot, behind Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Acer, and ahead of Toshiba. Gartner, meanwhile, pegged Apple's part of the pie at a slightly lower 8.8% in the third quarter. But Apple's year-over-year sales growth, although significantly better than in the last two quarters, lags far behind the numbers posted by Acer and Toshiba, which sported year-over-year gains of 48% and 37%, respectively, in IDC's estimates, and a whopping 61% and 46% in Gartner's. Apple could grab more market share if it lowered prices, but O'Donnell wasn't holding his breath. "The talk on the street is a $799 notebook," he said, referring to persistent rumors that Apple will introduce a lower-priced MacBook this year. "But I don't think they care about prices. They're all about making profit." Even so, Apple eventually will probably have to concede that the game has changed, especially in notebooks, where average prices overall have dropped 33% in the last two years. "There's been a total reset on prices," O'Donnell said, giving a nod to not only the inexpensive netbooks that increasingly dominate the U.S. laptop market, but also the falling prices of mainstream models.

Novell Tuesday released a Mono-based plug-in for Visual Studio that gives developers a debugger to help them use Windows to design applications that will run on Linux. Mono Tools for Visual Studio is a plug-in for Microsoft's integrated development environment (IDE). The plug-in lets developers use Visual Studio to write and maintain applications that can run on Windows, Linux, Mac and Unix platforms. In addition, Novell is integrating its Suse Studio Online, which lets users build custom distributions of Linux so they can package their applications on an appliance loaded with a Linux operating system. Mono Tools for Visual Studio runs with Mono 2.4, which is available now, and 2.6, which is slated for release in December or January.

Novell's Mono is a .Net-compatible set of tools that includes a Common Language Runtime environment that enables the cross-platform capabilities. Mono Tools for Visual Studio does not support Mono on the iPhone because it requires a Macintosh. Mono can be run on Linux, BSD, Unix, Mac OS X, Solaris and Windows. Now we have a full debugger that people can use from the comfort of their Windows machines with Visual Studio and deploy their applications on remote Linux machines." Mono Tools adds a pull-down menu within Visual Studio that gives access to the debugging capabilities and other coding and testing functionality contained in Mono. Novell officials said the most important part of the plug-in is a debugger that will make it easier for Visual Studio users to tap Linux as a deployment platform. "We did not have a debugger story," says Miguel de Icaza, vice president of the developer platform at Novell and the creator of Mono. "People had to fly by instruments when developing their applications with .Net and wanting to deploy them on a Linux server.

The software also includes an integrated porting analysis tools that directs users onto non-Windows platforms without needing to know any of the development nuances for those platforms. The Professional Edition for individuals is $99, while the Enterprise Edition (one developer per organization) is $249, and the Ultimate Edition is $2,499. The Ultimate Edition includes a limited commercial license to redistribute Mono on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. It also provides five enterprise developer licenses. Mono Tools for Visual Studio is available in three editions. Follow John on Twitter: http://twitter.com/johnfontana

They aren't selling personal supercomputers at Best Buy just yet. Silicon Graphics International Corp. But that day probably isn't too far off, as the costs fall and they become easier to use.

Monday released its first so-called personal supercomputer. The system can be expanded to an 80 core system with a capacity of up to 960GB of memory. The new Octane III system is priced from $7,995 with one Xeon 5500 processor. SGI said multiple configurations are available, which can include use of Nvidia graphics processing unit card as well as Intel's low powered Atom chip. An Octane III with a 10 dual socket, four cores, Xeon L5520 processors nodes, for 80 cores, 240GB of memory and integrated Gigabit Ethernet networking is priced at about $53,000. This new supercomputer's peak performance of about 726 floating point operations per second (FLOPS) won't put it on the Top 500 supercomputer list, but that's not the point of the machine, SGI says. SGI says that Atom chips are being used for application development and testing scale-out application code.

A key feature instead is the system's ease of use. Other major vendors already have products that fit into this category. Steve Conway, an analyst IDC, says the new SGI system joins a $2 billion worldwide market of HPC category of systems that cost less than $100,000. That market is expected to grow to $2.7 billion by 2013 or nearly 6% a year, which is a good rate of growth considering the server sales generally cratered this year, he said. Among them is Nvidia Corp., which last fall unveiled a desktop supercomputer, the Tesla Personal Supercomputer , that relies heavily on graphics processing unit cards. He said SGI has a good history of producing systems that work well out-of-the-box. This market is mostly "made up of people who typically don't have HPC experience, and so the transition to these systems has to be easy," said Conway.

But Conway questioned the personal supercomputer label on the system. It can come preconfigured with Windows Server or its HPC Server 2008 as well as Red Hat and Suse Linux servers, and includes a list of some 50 HPC compatible applications used in engineering, life sciences, oil and gas exploration and other uses. Although some users may run this system as truly their own personal HPC system, it supports workgroups as well. The customer installs the application. Rackable subsequently changed its name of the combined companies to Silicon Graphics International Corp. Silicon Graphics was an independent company until May of last year, when it was acquired for $42.5 million by Rackable Systems Inc.