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HP vs. Dell: Showdown at the Windows 7 upgrade corral
Here's a tale of two PC titans: HP and Dell. One executes well every quarter. The other doesn't. Both see big PC upgrade cycles ahead. Both are looking to ride... Continued »
Category: Government
November 23rd, 2009
Online retailers, marketing firms scam consumers for $1.4 billion
A U.S. government investigation has prompted several well-known online retailers to sever ties with marketing firms after both were accused of working together to deceive customers out of $1.4 billion.
The retailers, including Priceline.com, Classmates.com, FTD.com, Shutterfly.com and Orbitz.com, were accused of working with marketers Affinion, Vertrue and Webloyalty to mislead consumers into unknowingly signing up for “affinity” or “loyalty” programs that would charge their credit card accounts.
November 20th, 2009
EU extends deadline for review of Oracle-Sun deal
European regulators have agreed to extend the deadline to review Oracle’s acquisition of Sun, giving Oracle some more time to develop arguments in reply to Europe’s concerns, according to a Reuters report.
Earlier this month, the European Commission filed a Statement of Objections, a first step toward blocking the $7.4 billion deal, over concerns about MySQL. Oracle immediately fired back, issuing a statement that said European regulators have a “profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics.” The same day, the U.S. Department of Justice, which has already given its blessing to the deal, pretty much backed Oracle and offered reasons why the U.S. did not see the deal as anti-competitive.
Oracle has said that delays are becoming costly - to the tune of $100 million per month - and are further damaging the economies through job losses. Sun has had to put restructuring plans in place to stay alive while everyone waits for European approval, most recently by laying off 3,000 employees.
Oracle has said that Sun’s customers “universally support this merger and do not benefit from the continued uncertainty and delay.” The company said evidence against the Commission’s position is overwhelming. and that it lacks any credible theory or evidence of competitive harm.
The deadline was extended by one week, to Jan. 27, 2010 from Jan. 19.
Also see: Oracle tries to stop Sun’s bleeding: Is it too late?
November 19th, 2009
FAA hit with network glitch; Flight plans go manual
Updated: The Federal Aviation Authority is looking into a networking problem that threatens to delay flights across the U.S.
FAA spokesman Les Dorr said that there’s a “problem with the telecommunications network that’s affecting automated processing system” for things like flight plans.
“Anything controllers normally have done automatically have to be done manually,” said Dorr. Indeed, the FAA has a ground stop. Atlanta is the hub that appears to be most affected, reports CBS News.
According to the FAA, the problems reside in the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure, or FTI for short. FTI provides the voice, data, and video communications that support operations and mission support functions at more than 4,000 FAA and Department of Defense (DoD) facilities. Add it up and the network provides for more than 20,000 services such as switching and routing, network monitoring and control.
The FAA is currently investigating the problem. Dorr reiterated that the FAA can track planes with radar and have communication with pilots, but there’s an efficiency issue: You can only keep tabs on so many planes manually.
November 14th, 2009
Google Book Settlement revised; Open Book Alliance pans it as mere 'nip and tuck'
Google, the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers have modified their digital book agreement in an effort to placate the Justice Department and critics of the deal.
Among the key items in the revised settlement, detailed on Google’s public policy blog (PDF summary):
- The deal only covers books registered with the U.S. Copyright Office or published in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada. Among the key items:
- The new agreement addresses orphan works, which have unknown rights holders and limits what can be done with revenue garnered from these books.
- An independent fiduciary will look out for the rights holders of these orphan works.
- Google’s algorithm for creating competitive pricing in the book market was clarified.
It’s unclear whether the deal will mollify critics and regulators. Google’s book settlement gave the search giant permission to scan books and sell access to them for revenue sharing and a $125 million fee.
Critics, including regulators, Amazon.com and other groups, say the Google deal is anticompetitive and cover authors and publishers not covered by the Author’s Guild and Association of American Publishers.
The Open Book Alliance, which opposes the Google Books Settlement, already panned the deal. In a blog post, Open Book Alliance co-chair Peter Brantley noted:
“Our initial review of the new proposal tells us that Google and its partners are performing a sleight of hand; fundamentally, this settlement remains a set-piece designed to serve the private commercial interests of Google and its partners. None of the proposed changes appear to address the fundamental flaws illuminated by the Department of Justice and other critics that impact public interest.
The Open Book Alliance called the latest Google book settlement merely a “nip and tuck.”
Related: Google’s book settlement: Here comes the DOJ and likely deal tweaks
- Sniping over Google Books Settlement intensifies
- Amazon knocks Google Book Settlement; Opposition (and some support) lines up
- A spirited defense of the Google Book Search settlement
- Thanks to Google, writers’ lives may be even more thankless, unless….
- Google’s book settlement site
- The Open Book Alliance
November 9th, 2009
Oracle: EC has 'profound misunderstanding' of database market; DOJ seems to agree
updated: Oracle Corp. schooled the European Commission today on some basic knowledge about open-source technology, lashing out in a statement that the regulatory agency that’s currently holding up Oracle’s acquisition of Sun has revealed its “profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics.”
Separately, the U.S. Department of Justice released its own statement, essentially backing Oracle and explaining its reasons for giving the go-ahead for the acquisition and why it felt the deal was not anti-competitive.
The European Commission has expressed concerns over MySQL, delaying the acquisition from moving forward, filing a Statement of Objections today. In a statement responding to the Commission’s filing, Oracle wrote:
Oracle’s acquisition of Sun is essential for competition in the high end server market, for revitalizing Sparc and Solaris and for strengthening the Java development platform. The transaction does not threaten to reduce competition in the slightest, including in the database market. The Commission’s Statement of Objections reveals a profound misunderstanding of both database competition and open source dynamics. It is well understood by those knowledgeable about open source software that because MySQL is open source, it cannot be controlled by anyone. That is the whole point of open source.
The company argued that “the database market is intensely competitive,” with eight strong players and specifically names IBM, Microsoft and Sybase as open source vendors. As for MySQL competing with Oracle products, the company said they are very difference and that there is “no basis in European law for objecting to a merger of two among eight firms selling differentiated products.” In its own statement, the U.S. Department of Justice seemed to agree. It wrote:
The Division concluded, based on the specific facts at issue in the transaction, that consumer harm is unlikely because customers would continue to have choices from a variety of well established and widely accepted database products. The Department also concluded that there is a large community of developers and users of Sun’s open source database with significant expertise in maintaining and improving the software, and who could support a derivative version of it
Sun, which was already a financially-troubled company when Oracle made its acquisition bid, recently laid off 3,000 employees as part of a restructuring plans that stems from delays in regulatory approval. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison recently said that delays are costing about $100 million per month.
Oracle noted that Sun’s customers “universally support this merger and do not benefit from the continued uncertainty and delay.” The company said evidence against the Commission’s position is overwhelming. and that it lacks any credible theory or evidence of competitive harm.
Also see:
November 9th, 2009
60 Minutes: We're not ready for a cyber war
Our electric grid is vulnerable to a cyber attack and come to think of it so is every other piece of U.S. infrastructure.
That not so happy tale was painted by a bevy of folks in a 60 Minutes report. 60 Minutes also unearthed an attack on Brazil’s grid. In a nutshell:
- We’re not ready for a cyberattack;
- The hackers can move much faster than the U.S. government;
- A lot of the worst attacks will revolve around the power grid since everything needs electricity.
For those people paying attention to security none of this news is all that surprising.
Roll the tape:
And another excerpt on the potential for a online Jihad:
November 5th, 2009
House bill calls for ISPs to block some fake financial sites
I came across a pretty interesting read on CNET’s Politics and Law blog about an investor’s protection bill working its way through the House of Representatives.
On the surface, the bill is supposed to be about “reforming the regulatory structure of the U.S. financial services industry.” But Declan McCullagh, who writes the blog, highlights one easy-to-overlook part of the bill. language that essentially forces Internet Service Providers to play traffic cop on their networks.
The bill calls for ISPs to block Internet bad guys who pose as legitimate brokerage firms that are members of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC), a “government-linked entity that aids investors when funds are missing from their accounts, up to a limit of $500,000 for stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.”
That’s an awfully tall order, asking ISPs to not only differentiate the authentic sites from the fraudulent sites but also to identify which are posing as SIPC members. It’s a good thing that the bill’s author - Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania - is open to altering the language to address concerns. It turns out that the specific part of the bill was part of a similar bill introduced earlier this year by another Congressman.
Hopefully, the issue becomes a non-issue quickly. CNET, however, says the SIPC may have asked for that specific language to be in the bill.- but was unable to confirm because the SIPC president was unavailable. We’ll have to wait and see how it develops.
That aside, I couldn’t help but think, as I read the CNET post, how this was all somewhat hypocritical of Washington. One one hand, the net neutrality proposals coming out of the FCC basically prevent ISPs from playing traffic cop and differentiating from the different types of content moving over its pipelines. Let’s keep it free and open - or so the chant goes.
Then you have this sort of language slipping into a bill on Capitol Hill. On one hand, ISPs aren’t supposed to differentiate one type of content from another. But on the other hand, they would not only have to identify the bad guys but also block the ones who are posing as members of a government-backed group.
Can Washington have it both ways?
November 4th, 2009
EU showdown over Oracle-Sun; Objections seem imminent
Oracle is reportedly gearing up for a formal rejection by European regulators of its bid to acquire Sun Microsystems, according to a report in the Financial Times. An official statement of objection, the first step in blocking the $7.4 billion deal, could come as early as this week - but Oracle seems to be taking a wait-and-see approach before it makes another move.
A source tells the Financial Times that Oracle has refused to offer any concessions to regulators in Europe. Following the official statement, however, Oracle would have the chance to offer concessions or even wage a legal battle, a process that would extend a delay that’s already costing both money and jobs.
The U.S. Department of Justice has already given its blessings to the deal but the EU has expressed concerns over the future of MySQL. Opponents see the open source software as an eventual competitor to Oracle’s core business. But the company has said that it will continue to invest in MySQL.
Sun, which was already a financially-troubled company when Oracle made its acquisition bid, recently laid off 3,000 employees as part of a restructuring plans that stems from delays in regulatory approval. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison recently said that delays are costing about $100 million per month.
Also see:
November 2nd, 2009
Moffat no longer with IBM as fallout from insider trading scandal continues
Robert Moffat, a senior IBM executive who was arrested in an FBI insider trading sting this morning, is no longer employed by the company, a company official has confirmed. 
Moffat, who spent 31 years with the company, was most recently a senior VP responsible for “all IBM hardware offerings as well as the microelectronics division.” In that position, Moffat reported directly to company chairman, president and CEO Sam Palmisano. In a statement, the company said:
Rod Adkins, who was named acting head of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group on October 19, has been appointed senior vice president, STG. Bob Moffat, who had been placed on a leave of absence as a result of a U.S. federal investigation into his personal activities, is no longer an employee of IBM.
The company did not specify whether Moffat resigned or was terminated. It provided no other details, citing a policy of not commenting about personnel issues involving current or former employees.
Adkins, who has been with the company since 1981, has held a variety of product development, business operations and general management positions with the company, including general manager of desktop systems for the old PC division and head of the UNIX business from 1998 to 2001. In 2002, he was on Fortune’s list of the 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in America.
Moffat surrendered to FBI officials as part of the sting on Oct. 16 and was placed on temporary leave of absence days later.
This morning, GlobalFoundries issued a press release announcing that chairman and former AMD CEO Hector Ruiz, who reportedly leaked confidential information about AMD’s reorganization as part of the Galleon Group insider trading operation, will resign his position as chairman of the board, effective Jan. 4. Ruiz is currently on a voluntary leave of absence.
GlobalFoundries did not cite a reason for Ruiz’s resignation.
November 2nd, 2009
Ruiz resigns as GlobalFoundries chairman; no mention of insider trading scandal
Former AMD CEO Hector Ruiz, who reportedly leaked confidential information as part of the Galleon Group insider trading scandal, will step down as chairman of GlobalFoundries, a manufacturing unit of AMD that was spun off into its own company.
According to a press release issued today by GlobalFoundries, Ruiz will take a voluntary leave of absence from the board, effective immediately. His resignation will become effective January 4.
Board member Alan E. “Lanny” Ross, who was the former CEO of Broadcom, will become interim chairman, effective immediately, until a permanent chairman has been appointed by the board.
The board did not give a specific reason for the resignation, nor did it make any reference to Ruiz’ reported role in the Galleon insider trading scandal. Last month, the FBI arrested six people in a sting - including senior IBM executive Robert Moffat - for their roles in the Galleon scandal, calling it “the largest hedge fund insider trading case in history.”
The ring leader, Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of the hedge fund firm Galleon Group, allegedly got inside dirt from a bevy of tech executives. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Ruiz tipped Galleon off to the 2008 reorganization of AMD.
October 27th, 2009
L.A. votes to "Go Google"; pressure shifts to Google and the cloud
Score one for Google and The Cloud.
The Los Angeles City Council today voted unanimously to “Go Google,” approving a $7.25 million contract to outsource the city’s e-mail system to Google’s cloud and transition some 30,000 city employees to the cloud over the coming year, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.
Clearly, this is a big deal for the city of Los Angeles. But this vote is also monumental for cloud computing as a whole, which has gained popularity and widespread interest but still relatively little adoption as companies - and municipalities, apparently - weigh the anticipated cost benefits over the unknown risks that might come with system failures or data breaches.
The stakes are also high for Google, which has stepped up its campaign for Google Apps, its cloud-based suite of offerings, by highlighting how companies who are fed up with breakdowns and costs of maintaining old legacy systems finally decided to “Go Google.”
Both Google and Microsoft had put in bids for the city’s contract and, at one point, it seemed to be a showdown between the two, representing a bigger winner-take-all battle between old school systems and 21st Century cloud systems. In a post last month, I suggested that a win for Microsoft would show that Outlook and Exchange are still big players and that a win for Google would show that the cloud is ready for prime time.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the beginning of the end for Microsoft in this space. Los Angeles is just one city on this planet - and it’s only 30,000 city employees. But Google clearly has its sights set on the enterprise for the next wave of growth, even to the point that it could overtake - or nicely complement - the advertising business.
At the Gartner IT Symposium 2009 in Orlando earlier this month, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the largest number of seats for Google runs about 30,000 users and that goal right now is to gain users for its enterprise apps. He sees the enterprise as “humongous,” a multi-billion dollar business that has real potential. By Gartner’s calculations, enterprise accounts for about 3 cents of every dollar that Google makes, leaving plenty of room for growth.
That growth could come from the countless other municipalities, agencies and companies that have been toying with the idea of a move to the cloud but have held back, waiting for someone else to jump off the cliff first.
That’s what happened in L.A. today
October 23rd, 2009
Google's Schmidt: Washington politics "not very interesting"
Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in Washington this week as a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, popped into The Washington Post to chat with reporters and editors about a number of topics, including an FCC vote on net neutrality.
Google’s name has come up repeatedly in the debate over net neutrality, largely by AT&T, which believes that Google is just as much a gatekeeper of the Internet, albeit in a different way, as the companies that manage the Internet pipeline.
Schmidt told The Post that he favors net neutrality, but only to a certain point, according a report by The Post’s Mike Musgrove, a former colleague of mine. The bottom line: Schmidt’s interest in net neutrality is in keeping the providers from favoring some sites over others because of the traffic demands they place on the networks. However, there’s a fine line there - and Schmidt says it’s possible for the government “to screw the Internet up, big-time.”
For those who don’t know, I am a native of this region now known as Silicon Valley (no one called it that when I was a kid) but found myself transplanted in Washington for a couple of years when I worked for The Post. It was there - from working in The Post’s newsroom to interviewing folks on Capitol Hill - that I realized how different the two worlds are. Techies and politicians think differently and have different agendas.
With that said, I found the second half of Musgrove’s report especially interesting.
Google, Schmidt said, is strong enough to weather the storms that may arise from Washington policy decisions but new startups may not be. Schmidt let it be known that he’s not a fan of Capitol Hill politics that doesn’t rely on things like metrics, algorithms and, most importantly, facts. Schmidt’s quote from the report:
I spend so much time in Washington now because of the work that I’ve been doing, I deal with all these people who make assertions without fact. (Policy people) will hand me some report that they wrote or they’ll make some assertion, and I’ll say, ‘Well, is that true?’ — and they can’t prove it.
Hmmm. Maybe there’s an app to fix that.
Schmidt also acknowledged that the tech industry hasn’t been very strong on lobbying in Washington - but that’s not really the strength of the tech industry. Out here in Silicon Valley, the focus is on innovation, not politics. I love the kicker quote from Schmidt:
The part of politics in Washington that’s ‘who you know’ and all that kind of stuff, it’s just not very interesting.
Well said.
October 22nd, 2009
FCC unanimously approves next steps toward Net Neutrality
The Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously today to move forward on a process - expected to take 120 days - that could lead to Net Neutrality regulations. The vote came after the two dissenters on the commission - Republicans Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker - went on the record to say they disagreed with some of the arguments in chairman Julius Genachowski’s proposal. According to the Washington Post’s PostTech blog, McDowell said:
Today we do disagree on substance. I do not agree with the majority’s view that the Internet is showing breaks and cracks and that the government … needs to fix it. Nonetheless it is important to remember that the commission is starting a process, not ending one.
McDowell also said that the FCC should also be considering whether new rules should apply to a larger spectrum of companies, including Web companies and mobile carriers, and not just traditional access providers such AT&T and Comcast.
AT&T, which has been lobbying against Net Neutrality, has argued that any new rules should apply to content delivery networks - Web companies that deliver information to users and, therefore, act as gatekeepers of the Web in a way that’s different from the access providers but definitely in line with what the FCC is looking into.
The Net Neutrality matter now heads into a period for public comments and other fact-gathering. That process will continue into early next year.
Also see: FCC’s official release (PDF), FCC’s Net Neutrality Presentation
Related coverage:
- FCC’s Net neutrality push: Is wireless access different?
- AT&T cries foul to FCC, uses Google Voice to spark Net Neutrality debate
- Smart Planet: Net neutrality: When does transparency collide with competitive edge?
October 22nd, 2009
U.S. CTO: Health care needs better billing systems
At the Web 2.0 Summit in San Franicsco, U.S. CTO Aneesh Chopra talks about IT changes that need to be made to the current health care system. He believes one of the biggest areas of waste is the money spent on billing within the system, with 17 cents of every dollar going towards medical billing. He says his department is working on solutions to reduce these costs.
October 20th, 2009
AT&T encourages employees to speak out against net neutrality
AT&T’s top policy exec - aka lobbyist - has turned to AT&T employees for a last-chance campaign to flood the FCC with anti-net neutrality messages. In a memo that’s starting to circulate around the Internet, Senior Executive VP Jim Cicconi tells encourages the employees, their friends and family to “join the voices telling the FCC not to regulate the Internet.”
He suggests that employees use their personal e-mail accounts - so as to not be identified as AT&T employees, one might presume - to join the discussions on the FCC’s site, which is taking public comments on proposed network neutrality rules that will be subject of the commission’s meeting on Thursday. Cicconi writes:
Those who seek to impose extreme regulations on the network are flooding the site to influence the FCC. It’s now time for you to voice your opinion!
The memo reeks of desperation on the part of AT&T, which has put itself in the spotlight as the anti-net neutrality poster child. Most recently, the company has said that if the FCC insists on net neutrality rules that Web companies such as Google also deserve some scrutiny because, as content delivery networks, they serve as gatekeepers to the Web alongside broadband service providers.
In his letter, Cicconi goes on to list possible talking points - including a “if it ain’t broke, then don’t try to fix it” argument - that employees might consider when expressing their opinions, or rather the opinions of the company. (Here’s a thought, JIm: Why not just ask the employees for their personal e-mail addresses and then have your staff pull a couple all-nighters so they can rotate these talking points and make sure that the FCC sees the number of reasons why “regular people” are against net neutrality.)
The memo is posted in its entirety on the Actuarial Outpost blog. The Washington Post confirmed its authenticity with AT&T.
October 19th, 2009
Web powerhouses to FCC: We support open Internet
The Internet’s big guns have signed their names to a letter of support for a continued open Internet, sending it to the FCC this morning, just days before the agency is slated to vote on network neutrality rules.
The letter is actually from the Open Internet Coalition, a membership group devoted to keeping the Internet “fast, open and accessible” by Americans. But the letter itself has the support of - and signatures of - 27 top technology company executives, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, Skype CEO Josh Silverman and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
In the letter, the coalition writes:
For most of the Internet’s history, FCC rules have ensured that consumers have been able to choose the content and services they want over their Internet connections. Entrepreneurs, technologists, and venture capitalists have previously been able to develop new online products and services with the guarantee of neutral, nondiscriminatory access by users, which has fueled an unprecedented era of economic growth and creativity. Existing businesses have been able to leverage the power of the Internet to develop innovative product lines, reach new consumers, and create new ways of doing business.
The debate over net neutrality has long been a complex one, including a recent back-and-forth between AT&T and Google. The position of the broadband service providers, including AT&T, is that open and free rules should apply to everyone, not just the providers. They say that a company like Google - as a content delivery network - is just as much an Internet gatekeeper as AT&T, which manages a pipeline.
But the Washington Post has reported that the FCC is more interested in violations of telecommunications laws than with potential net neutrality violations and that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is pushing for net neutrality rules that would focus more on broadband providers and less on web companies such as Google.
October 16th, 2009
Senior IBM exec among those charged in Wall Street insider trading sting
Greed on Wall Street has landed six people - including a long-time, high-level IBM executive - in handcuffs after the FBI charged them with being involved with “the largest hedge fund insider trading case in history.”
In all, the six netted illegal profits of more than $20 million by using insider information about a number of companies, including IBM, AMD, Sun Microsystems, Akamai, Clearwire and Google. The information sharing that led to illegal trading goes back as far as January 2006 and the case itself represents the first time that court-authorized wiretaps have been used to target significant insider trading on Wall Street. Those arrested were:
- Raj Rajaratnam, managing member of Galleon Management, LLC and a portfolio manager for Galleon Technology Offshore, Ltd.
- Danielle Chiesi, an employee of New Castle Funds, LLC and formerly the equity hedge fund group of Bear Stearns Asset Management, Inc.
- Mark Kurland, a top executive at New Castle
- Rajiv Goel, a Director in Strategic Investments at Intel Capital, the investment arm of Intel Corp.
- Anil Kumar, a Director at McKinsey & Company, Inc., a global management consulting firm
- Robert Moffat, Senior Vice President and Group Executive at IBM
Moffat, who surrendered to FBI officials this morning in White Plains, NY, has been with IBM for more than 31 years and has held a number of executive positions.
Moffat, who has been in his most recent position since July 2008, is responsible for “all IBM hardware offerings as well as the microelectronics division,” according to his bio on the company’s Web site. (PDF) The company’s integrated supply chain operations, which include global manufacturing, procurement and customer fulfillment, also report to him. In his position, Moffat reported directly to company chairman, president and CEO Sam Palmisano.
Moffat is also listed as a member of the IBM Performance Team and the IBM Corporate Operations Team, a member of the Board of Trustees for The Manufacturing Institute, an educational and research affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers, and a non-voting observer on the Board of Directors of Lenovo Group Limited.
The complaints are complex and contain multiple instances of information sharing for the purpose of insider trading. Excerpts of the FBI’s press release, as it relates to Moffat, read:
KURLAND, MOFFAT, and CHIESI engaged in overlapping schemes to commit insider trading. Specifically, CHIESI obtained inside information from MOFFAT, RAJARATNAM, and an executive at Akamai on several publicly traded companies, including IBM, Sun Microsystems, AMD, and Akamai. CHIESI in turn shared that information with KURLAND, and both CHIESI and KURLAND then traded on that information in the accounts of their hedge fund, New Castle…
During other calls intercepted by the FBI, CHIESI obtained non-public information concerning AMD from MOFFAT and RAJARATNAM, and shared that information with KURLAND. For example, in August 2008, CHIESI and MOFFAT were discussing a confidential business transaction that AMD was then negotiating with investors from Abu Dhabi. MOFFAT had access to inside information concerning this deal because as part of the transaction, IBM would be granting a license to an entity to be spun off by AMD. Toward the end of the call, CHIESI asked about the timing of the deal involving AMD, and MOFFAT replied, “six to eight weeks from my meeting.” When asked the chances that the deal would fall through, MOFFAT replied, “Zero…, I see no way that it doesn’t get done.” MOFFAT also said that IBM had “already signed” the agreement.
The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office say that the investigation is continuing and issued a warning to those engaging in corrupt and illegal activities on Wall Street. In a statement, Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said:
Today, we take decisive action against fraud on Wall Street. This case should be a wake up call for Wall Street. It should be a wake up call for every hedge fund manager and every Wall Street trader and every corporate executive who is even thinking about engaging in insider trading. As the defendants in this case have now learned the hard way, they may have been privy to a lot of confidential corporate information, but there was one secret they did not know: we were listening. Today, tomorrow, next week, the week after, privileged Wall Street insiders who are considering breaking the law will have to ask themselves one important question: Is law enforcement listening?
Moffat, along with several other defendants, were expected to appear in Manhattan Federal Court in New York today. Goel is expected to appear in federal court in San Jose today.
October 15th, 2009
IAB to FTC: Rescind blogger rules
The Interactive Advertising Bureau’s President and CEO has called on the Federal Trade Commission to rescind its new “blogger rules” because they create an unfair distinction between traditional media and online media. More specifically, they revoke from online media a First Amendment protection that’s afforded traditional media for generations.
In an open letter, Randall Rothenberg writes:
For the 400 members of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, most of which are small and medium-sized enterprises struggling to build their businesses in the face of the worst decline in marketing spending since the 1930’s, the implication that online social media represent a separate class of communications channels with less Constitutional protection than corporate-owned newspapers, radio stations, or cable television networks is of particularly grave concern.
At the heart of the matter are the payments and freebies that online media - specifically bloggers - might receive in the course of their work. Consumers need to know, as the argument goes, if the author’s work has been compromised by a freebie. And then the FTC imposed new rules that specifically listed bloggers.
October 15th, 2009
AT&T to FCC: Close loopholes and write rules that apply to Google, too
AT&T has taken off the boxing gloves in its fight with Google over the Google Voice service and proposed Net Neutrality rules. In a letter to the FCC (PDF) this week, AT&T went on the attack to portray Google as a big powerful company that’s trying to fool the FCC into believing that the rules shouldn’t apply to it.
In the letter, AT&T is still trying to cover all of its bases. That means that, at times, it’s hard to follow which arguments it’s trying to make - the one about Google Voice or the one about net neutrality. And it doesn’t help that it stooped a little too low by referencing a convent of Benedictine nuns in a list of those who were handicapped by having calls to their numbers blocked to and from Google Voice numbers. Just mentioning an ambulance service, health clinic and school - which were also in the list - would have been sufficient.
AT&T, of course, is trying to make the larger point. The net neutrality rules will likely be in place for some time. AT&T wants to make sure that the FCC closes the potential loopholes for Google - such as being able to call itself a “Web service” to avoid being regulated as a telecommunication service.
I’ve long argued that Google Voice is a Web service, not a phone service, because it needs a working landline or cell phone to process the call. AT&T recognizes that, too, and notes that - regardless of how it does it - Google Voice processes a “PSTN-to-PSTN” call and therefore falls under the jurisdiction of the FCC.
Here’s the part where AT&T is making sure that it covers all bases:
And even if some aspects of Google Voice do not qualify as a telecommunications service as Google alleges, they would nonetheless qualify as an “information service” under the Communications Act because they would offer a “capability for generating, acquiring, storing, transforming, processing, retrieving, utilizing, or making available information via telecommunications.” These services are thus no less subject to FCC jurisdiction than is broadband Internet access service, which is an information service.
This, of course, is the argument that those “open and free” rules should apply to everyone, not just AT&T, Comcast and other broadband pipeline operators. In AT&T’s opinions, Google - as a content delivery network - is just as much a gatekeeper of the Internet as AT&T, which manages the pipeline. It used to be that the ISP was also the provider of the content (remember AOL?) but those days have largely gone away as people get Internet content from Google searches or sites like Yahoo Finance.
Anonymous sources told The Washington Post, however, that the FCC is more interested in violations of telecommunications laws and not as concerned with potential violations of net neutrality. Separately, the Post Tech blog also reported that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is pushing for net neutrality rules that would focus more on broadband providers - the cable companies and telcos - and less on web companies such as Yahoo and Google.
With the cards stacking up this way, it’s no wonder that AT&T is going on the attack, pulling out the nuns and covering all bases. This is pretty much that last Hail Mary pass to the FCC before the big vote next week.
October 13th, 2009
TechGuard keeps spam and botnets at bay with one-click, enterprise-level security for SMBs, SOHOs
One of the most difficult things for a small or medium business to do is set up a security scheme that’s effective, affordable and intelligible to the average employee.
Chesterfield, Mo. and Baltimore, Md.-based TechGuard is attempting to address that problem by bringing its enterprise and government-level knowledge to small and medium businesses and small or home offices.
TechGuard’s PoliWall is currently used by government agencies and large enterprises to control network access. The software enables those organizations to allow or block access from entire countries with a click, as well as block single IP addresses and IP ranges.
I spoke with TechGuard CEO Suzanne Magee about their new PoliWall ESE, a suite of security solutions developed specifically for SMBs and SOHOs that turns the government-level security firm into the WD-40 of the cybersecurity industry.
Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet.
See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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