ReadWriteEnterprise

CIOs and managers who answer to CIOs attended the keynote sessions at the CeBIT conference in Hannover yesterday expecting Microsoft to explain to them, for the first time, where the business value in Windows 8 will come from. What they got may have been a bit of a shock: It was a demonstration of all the new Windows 8 features that Microsoft expects consumers to flock to in high numbers.

It was followed by this argument, by the company's Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Turner: Employees will be bringing devices into the workplace that run Windows 8, whether it wants them or not. Running Windows 8 will be as simple as plugging in a USB stick, even in a Windows 7 machine. So enterprises had better "get ahead" now, and embrace the wave rather than try to repel it.

A rumor repeated enough times on the Web is too often given the same status as truth. Then, by the time the rumor is discredited, the story is old and dead anyway, and the next rumor has taken hold. Take the case of the DNSChanger Trojan. Last November, as RWW's David Strom first reported, the FBI indicted seven men suspected of involvement with an Estonian malware distribution firm. That malware, which plagues U.S. Government systems to this day, simply changed PCs' DNS server settings to point to those operated by the firm. And that firm directed unsuspecting users to sites containing ads that the firm hosted, and allegedly profited from.

Naturally, you'd want to shut that down. The problem last November was, doing this would disrupt Internet service to users worldwide, including government systems believed to have been targeted. So the FBI sought and received a court's permission to have a well-respected non-profit group run legitimate DNS servers at the same addresses, up until the addresses changed by the Trojan could be replaced. That lease was set to expire tomorrow, and as it turned out, it wasn't enough time. Sensationalist news sources just love a countdown - if it's ticking, it must be a time bomb.

Service packs for enterprise Linux distributions are typically pretty conservative affairs that are only noteworthy for the bugs that they fix. SUSE is bucking that trend with the second service pack for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11, by adding new features and providing customers with the 3.0 Linux kernel released last year.

SLES 11 SP2 comes with a few new tricks besides the new kernel. Customers will get a new version of Samba, for example. Most notable is the supported inclusion of the Btrfs filesystem and tools to manage snapshots. Snapper, a GUI or CLI tool to manage the snapshots, integrates with SUSE's Zypper and YaST management tools to allow roll back system updates.

This week several security vendors announced new and improved versions of their endpoint security products that involve a new level of sophistication and protection. The tools include the launch of SecureAnywhere from Webroot and new products from Symantec's Norton division. Finally, Bitdefender has a new version of its free QuickScan online malware scanner here just for Windows PCs. The scan initiates right from your browser window.

While as we mentioned earlier this month, Google has begun building out its own gigabit network in Kansas City, Chattanooga Tenn. already has their own gig network up and running and they aren't sitting around just watching the packets fly by. This summer will see the culmination of a series of activities, including an incubator/accelerator program, a student-oriented hatchery program, and cash prizes for gig geeks galore. If you live there you probably already know about these activities, but if you are thinking about moving to where you can get faster Internet service, you might want to consider packing your bags this summer.

Sometimes, it is the simplest of things that can matter a great deal to us. In this case, it is saying "thank you" to a coworker for a job well done.

If you are using VMware's Socialcast collaboration tool, now you can, through an add-on app that they call Thanks. It is almost so deliciously simple and obvious you wonder why they even thought of it. Well, I am glad they did.

Back in December 2006, as part of its agreement to merge with former regional Bell operating company BellSouth, AT&T made a pledge to the Federal Communications Commission. In that pledge, AT&T promised it would maintain a fair and neutral policy toward all Internet packet routing, applying no privileges based on packets' origin, content, or destination.

It's perhaps the clearest definition of net neutrality that has ever been devised. So a group of AT&T shareholders have been wondering why the company is running from it. Last month, they sought a shareholders' vote to effectively embed AT&T's 2006 net neutrality language as network policy. AT&T sought the Securities and Exchange Commission's permission to block that shareholders' proposal. Yesterday, after five Democratic senators weighed in, the SEC denied AT&T's motion, and the proposal now must go forward.

It's only a few weeks now before the annual security conference that bears the initials of the first commercial implementers of cryptographic security outside the government security sector. Just in time for RSA, a team of researchers based in Switzerland say they have uncovered evidence of a new flaw in the way public keys are generated using the RSA algorithm. Those researchers include a certain, notable Dutch professor who used to make hacker headlines of his own back in the day.

Although the Swiss team's conclusions are being questioned by some respected names, their data indicates one more reason why commonly used implementations of SSL encryption may be prone to failure, and should perhaps not be trusted at all.

Could the growing number of device manufacturers demanding intellectual property royalties of somewhere around 2.25% per device sold be establishing a de facto cartel, establishing fees that collectively render it impossible for new competitors to enter the field? That would appear to be the subject matter to which European Commission Vice President Joaquin Almunia alluded during a speech in Paris last Friday.

Comm. Almunia now has the job made famous by Comm. Neelie Kroes during her relentless pursuit of Microsoft as Commissioner for Competition. During Friday's speech, Almunia appeared to suggest that a new enforcement mechanism may be necessary to prevent manufacturers from establishing barriers to entry under the guise of "FRAND" - fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory - licensing terms.

In the 20th century, corporations recruited talented professionals but then nurtured them and integrated them into their organizations. Talent was part of their business foundations. In the more intricate economy of the 21st, talent is something perceived to be possessed by individuals. Corporations recruit these people, and then undertake what's called compensation management in an effort to retain them as long as possible, and to let go of talent that doesn't perform up to scale.

The value of a single, global database for evaluating the dollar value of individual talent on a real-time scale was affirmed today in a very big way, with the announcement of Oracle's intention to acquire cloud-based talent management system Taleo.