News

Dell loses bid for ‘cloud computing’ trademark

USPTO denies Dell's application to trademark cloud computing, saying it is a generic term that describes services offered by many companies

Microsoft sues site to stop certification test leaks

Microsoft claims Freetech Services was selling actual exam questions on its certification test help-site

Beijing Olympics by the numbers

China is posting records away from the sporting events at the 2008 Olympics, including its use of technology

Microsoft faces Taiwan antitrust investigation

Taiwan's investigation will also look into complaints Microsoft is limiting consumer choices by restricting the availability of Windows XP on new PCs

Gmail leaves Google Apps admins nervous

Recent outages inconvenience and irritate users, who still remain hopeful that Google will correct problems

Update: Gmail users report yet another outage

For the third time in two weeks, Gmail users have been locked out of their accounts due to the "502 Server Error" login problem

Dell, Intel cut out Microsoft

New technologies' most compelling feature is that there's no need to boot up Windows

IBM’s XIV storage lacks high-end features, analyst says

First technology to come from IBM's acquisition of Israeli startup meets with mixed reviews, but more complete product rollout may be coming

Key legal win for open source

Court rules that the open source licensors in some circumstances will have recourse under copyright law

Where to place your SOA bets

The trick is to find the value in SOA governance.

Legal flap over Defcon talk exposes divide on security flaws

Some in IT community see restraining order as infringement of First Amendment rights; others view it as another example of researchers driven by ego and desire for fame

ISO, IEC reject appeals, approve OOXML spec

Appeals by Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela did not garner support from two-thirds of ISO and IEC management boards

Daily news beat for August 15, 2008

Windows 7's coming-out parties, Samsung's green handsets, Sun open sources mobile dev tool, and more.

InfoWorld News Quiz

These past five days comprised one of tech's weirdest weeks yet.

Samsung releases ‘green’ handsets

Plastic outer shell of the F268, released in China; the W510, for Korea; and the E200 Eco, for Europe constructed of "bio-plastic" made from corn

The fallacy of security expertise

Such is the life of a computer professional — stop studying and you become irrelevant.

Peer-to-peer client uTorrent fixes serious vulnerability

Popular file-sharing program patches bug found in malicious torrent that causes a stack overflow, which can allow attackers to upload other malicious software to the PC

IT managers choose SSDs over hard disks

Though more expensive, solid-state drives help IT staff save space, cut energy bills, and deliver faster speeds

VMotion and FCoE: A match made in admin heaven

CNA-equipped servers become an easy target for VMotion on a converged Ethernet and FC network

PDC, WinHEC will be Windows 7 coming-out parties

Microsoft plans to post Windows 7 details, updates in its new Engineering Windows 7 company blog

Sun: Mobile dev tool tackles fragmentation

Company releases source code for Java ME-based Lightweight UI Toolkit, which provides UI library for developing mobile applications

Impact of SaaS on the enterprise ERP market

A recent Gartner report finds SaaS too immature for vendors to offer the suite of integrated ERP solutions that large enterprises need

Torvalds: Fed up with the ‘security circus’

Creator of Linux kernel prefers model where bugs are fixed as early as possible without a lot of hype instead of current situation

Bill Gates predicts software revolution

In first official speech since stepping down as Microsoft chairman, Gates discusses continued expansion of Internet services and its effect on software development

MobileMe users fall prey to phishing scam

Cyber-criminals scammed between 100 and 200 people with mac.com addresses in just one day

Update: SAP files counterclaim against Waste Management

SAP alleges that it is owed millions in maintenance and services fees

Microsoft re-issues July WSUS patch

Patch represents the second time in the past month that Redmond has issued a fix

Web 2.0 APIs and services are here today for SOA

Google Reader becomes more discreet when sharing

Google gives Reader users the option of continuing to share their feeds with all of their Google Talk contacts or of drafting a specific list of people to share with

Analyst: In-house app development fraught with waste

Study finds that corporate software development is marked by budget woes, protracted project lengths, and dissatisfied end users

Dutch police, FBI rein in large botnet

Botnet created by a teenager relied totally on social engineering to spread and at one time had as many as 150,000 machines worldwide

Daily news beat for August 14, 2008

Trust, or lack thereof, in the cloud

Open source advocates hail appeals court ruling

Federal courts ruling allows greater protection for open source software against copyright infringement

Finding future tech visionaries

Intel launches smaller SSD for netbooks, mini-desktops

New Z-P230 solid-state drive sheds pounds, costs less than preceding models

AOL phisher gets seven-year sentence

Connecticut man masterminded a phishing scheme that targeted AOL users over a four-year period

Intel drops Centrino Atom brand after five months

Intel's Centrino Atom brand, which was confusing to some observers, will now be known just as 'Atom'

Lightweight UI Toolkit to heal JME fragmentation

Open source toolkit to ease portable interface development for Java mobile apps

Microsoft to unveil new licensing policies for virtual machines

Microsoft expected to tie licenses to virtual machines rather than to physical ones

Microsoft kills more third-party ActiveX controls

Company issues kill bit updates for Hewlett-Packard, Aurigma ActiveX controls

eXpresso to expand online access to Office files

In addition to Excel documents, eXpresso in September will have a hosted application that makes Word and PowerPoint available to share, edit online

Apple loses shine with networking, supply chain issues

Though company continues to post strong profits, more challenges up ahead when iPhone goes on sale in more countries and more retail outlets

Google says thanks for Android petition

Developers' request for updates on Android SDK met with noncommittal two-sentence response from Google

Storage boom drives strong Brocade results

Enterprises' need to keep more data and consumers' desire to store more content online are fueling growth, analyst says

VMware CEO apologizes for ‘time bomb’ mess

Exec's pen letter acknowledges disruptions experienced by partners and customers after bug crippled virtual servers running VMware

VMware bugs aggravate users

The bug is more than just a glitch to some users, and the complexity of the upgrade just adds to the woes

A complaint about Microsoft’s poor documentation

Mainframe here to stay

Majority of IT managers surveyed said they will continue to use mainframes for legacy apps and move new workloads to the platform

Daily news beat for August 13, 2008