And why does it pay? Because identity thieves never go to jail.

Case in point: Friday's Boston Herald had a story about a local woman having her credit card number stolen. While on a ski vacation two weeks ago, she got a call from Dell saying she had ordered a $1,250 computer to be sent to Texas. Luckily, ...]]> (InfoWorld) – As anybody who has ever been the victim of identity theft knows, the reason it’s so common is because it pays.

And why does it pay? Because identity thieves never go to jail.

Case in point: Friday’s Boston Herald had a story about a local woman having her credit card number stolen. While on a ski vacation two weeks ago, she got a call from Dell saying she had ordered a $1,250 computer to be sent to Texas. Luckily, the victim was able to cancel the transaction before the computer got shipped, but not everyone is so lucky.

According to the Herald, the victim says the chances of this criminal ever being prosecuted are “slim to none.”

She ought to know. Her name is Martha Coakley and last Wednesday she was sworn in as Attorney General for the state of Massachusetts.

The Tower Group, a research and advisory company focused on the financial services industry, believes that many mobile commerce offerings now emerging from the financial services sector "lack a reasonable and justifiable focus" on mobile security.

IBM sued the Sunnyvale, California, company in November for patent infringement and breach of contract because PSI is a licensed z/OS user. ...]]> (InfoWorld) – Mainframe computer vendor Platform Solutions Inc. (PSI) has countersued IBM, saying the giant company should not have accused it of infringing patents when it created computers that allow customers to run IBM’s System z operating system and software on mainframes from other vendors.

IBM sued the Sunnyvale, California, company in November for patent infringement and breach of contract because PSI is a licensed z/OS user. Now PSI has filed its own lawsuit alleging that IBM has committed antitrust violations, unfair competition, and business torts, according to papers filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

PSI’s computers provide the only alternative in a market where IBM has held a monopoly position for decades, PSI vice president of product management and marketing, Christian Reilly, said in a release.

“IBM’s lawsuit against PSI is part of a concerted effort to eliminate competition for mainframe computers, and its refusal to provide the operating systems needed to run mainframe computers is? blatantly anticompetitive,” Reilly said.

IBM did not respond to a request for comment.

PSI plans to launch a line of “open mainframe computers” later in 2007 that can run IBM’s z/OS as well as other data center operating systems like HP-UX, Linux, and Windows. PSI is now testing the design with corporate beta users and has demonstrated it at trade shows such as the IBM users’ group SHARE.

PSI hopes to sell the mainframes to corporate and government users who need to perform high-volume and mission-critical data processing needs, including matters such a billing, accounting, order entry, record keeping, and transaction processing, the company said.

In addition to denying IBM’s patent infringement claims, PSI’s lawsuit charges that IBM has now turned to illegal tactics, such as barring its software customers from using other vendors’ hardware.

“Contrary to IBM’s assertions, IBM has and is engaged in anticompetitive, deceptive, and tortious acts intended to eliminate competition and prolong its monopoly in the worldwide market for mainframe computers compatible with IBM applications and software,” PSI said in its lawsuit.

“Until 2001, IBM’s ability to abuse its monopoly power was limited by the existence of competition from developers of other IBM-compatible mainframes, such as Amdahl and Hitachi. Since the decisions by Amdahl and Hitachi to exit the mainframe market, IBM’s market power in the IBM-compatible mainframe market has grown year by year.”

Today IBM has greater than 85 percent market share, towering over competitors like Bull and Unisys, PSI stated. Even Sun or Linux servers from larger competitors cannot compete because a user would have to link 30 of those machines to do the work of a single mainframe.

“Rather than competing on the merits against PSI by offering better products, better service, or lower prices, however, IBM has sought to extinguish the threat posed by PSI by conditioning the sale of its mainframe operating systems on the purchase or continued use of an IBM mainframe and by refusing to license its operating systems to customers of PSI’s mainframe computer,” PSI said.

By suing IBM, PSI is picking a fight with a much larger opponent. But PSI does have some friends in its corner. The computers use the Itanium 2 processor from Intel, whose investment arm, Intel Capital, also provides some of the funding for PSI.

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The network, designed to cover about 1,500 square miles and 2.4 million residents, has strong support in the region and is on schedule for deployment starting this year, backers said Friday at the Wireless Communications Association Symposium in San Jose, California.

The login information was contained in 15 URLs submitted through? Google's Firefox toolbar, which lets users report Web pages they suspect to belong to phishing sites. Most of the URLs on the list didn't have login information.

The study shows that federal agencies and managers still need to be convinced of the value of telecommuting, said Joel Brunson, president of Tandberg Federal, a videoconferencing software and services vendor that helped ...]]> (InfoWorld) – Just 35 percent of U.S. government managers believe their agencies support telecommuting despite a 7-year-old law requiring agencies to offer telework options to workers, according to a study released Monday.

The study shows that federal agencies and managers still need to be convinced of the value of telecommuting, said Joel Brunson, president of Tandberg Federal, a videoconferencing software and services vendor that helped fund the survey. Sixty-one percent of federal managers surveyed said they have misinterpreted co-workers when communicating by e-mail, and 43 percent misinterpreted phone conversations, according to the survey.

Thirty-two percent of managers said the lack of face-to-face communication is a telework challenge, Brunson noted. “The big thing the survey showed was that there is a real inertia among federal managers and the agencies to endorse teleworking,” he said.

The U.S. Congress passed a law in 2000 requiring federal agencies to offer telecommuting as an option to many employees. Advocates of telework say it can provide government agencies several benefits, including a way to remotely continue operations during a natural disaster or terrorist attack. Telecommuting can also ease the Washington, D.C., area’s traffic problems, reduce pollution, and increase worker productivity, advocates say.

Although many agencies seem to see organizational benefits from telecommuting, there’s a “misalignment” between agency views and manager views, Brunson said. In addition to continuity of operations, agencies see telework as a way to recruit workers, he said.

But managers see mostly benefits to employees, Brunson said. Seventy-four percent of federal managers who do not manage teleworkers said a better work/life balance was the top driver for telework, while only 32 percent saw continuity of operations as the top reason.

“Maybe we need to do a better job of educating the managers on how … telework helps the agency,” Brunson said.

Fear of not having control over employees’ activities was the biggest concern from managers who do not manage teleworkers, while productivity concerns were the largest among managers who do manage teleworkers. Those fears are understandable, Brunson said, but many companies use performance metrics to track teleworker production, and several studies have suggested that teleworkers are more productive than their in-office counterparts.

“Telework is not a substitute for a face-to-face meeting,” he added. “But there’s a lot of technology out there that will allow you to collaborate on face-to-face communications, spreadsheets, and whatever you’re working on.”

While 35 percent of the 214 U.S. agency managers surveyed said they believe their agencies support telework, 18 percent were unsure and 47 percent said they don’t believe that’s the case. Last May, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report saying only nine of 23 agencies surveyed reported they had plans in place for essential workers to telecommute.

The survey also found that support for telecommuting grew the more a manager was involved with it. Only 54 percent of managers who do not manager teleworkers had a favorable impression of telecommuting, while 63 percent of managers who do manage teleworkers were favorable and 75 percent of mangers who are teleworkers were favorable.

The survey was commissioned by Telework Exchange, a public and private partnership focused on government telecommuting, and the Federal Managers Association, an organization representing U.S. government managers.

Temporarily dubbed draft version 1.10, it will go out as version 2.0 when it is released to the full IEEE 802.11n committee, about 400 strong, by the end of the month.

According to Bill McFarland, a member of the working ...]]> (InfoWorld) – After much debate and a lot of contention among the overall IEEE membership, the all-important IEEE 802.11n working group has given its stamp of approval to the next draft version of the specification.

Temporarily dubbed draft version 1.10, it will go out as version 2.0 when it is released to the full IEEE 802.11n committee, about 400 strong, by the end of the month.

According to Bill McFarland, a member of the working group just back from the London meeting where version 1.10 was approved, all of the contending parties who caused the original delays appear to be satisfied.

This includes the handset and handheld manufacturers who wanted more consideration given to low power consumption and VoIP capabilities, consumer electronics manufacturers who wanted the standard to accommodate more than access points, and the major hardware network and chip manufacturers who wanted to put the 802.11n spec on a fast track to approval.

Manufacturers like Atheros, Intel, and Apple and their customers will be happy to hear that version 1.10 is compatible with the pre-802.11n products they have already created.

“It will only require a minor firmware upgrade for complete compatibility,” said McFarland.

The major change was around the implementation of the 40MHz channel. It has been adjusted to accommodate older 2.4GHz band devices, which may be confused by the wider channel bandwidth.

The new spec calls for the use of two 20MHz bands. Under version 2.0, the system will scan the environment looking for legacy devices that might not understand the wider bandwidth, in which case the 802.11n device will back off and send data over only a single 20GHz band. While this would slow down overall data throughput to a single 20MHz channel, 802.11n’s MIMO (Multimedia In Multimedia Out) technology will still give 802.11n faster performance.

A second change will allow an 802.11n device to check to make sure both channels are clear before sending data. A third change allows devices, such as Bluetooth-enabled devices, to send a signal saying it does not want to receive data in the 40MHz mode.

In order for a Bluetooth device to send this alert, it must also include wireless LAN, which, for example, the Apple iPhone includes.

Wireless LAN IEEE 802.11a devices in the 5GHz band will be able to use the full 40MHz channel.

While the spec is now much closer to completion, there are still a number of steps that must be taken before final approval.? 

The 2.0 draft spec is expected to be mailed to the membership for comments and voting by the end of January. Voting is expected to be completed on version 2.0 by the end of March with a new draft, version 3.0, ready by the end of May.

At that time, draft 3.0 would be created, and if 75 percent of the members approve, the spec will go into recirculation balloting.

“At this point, the documents are considered stable,” said McFarland.

Assuming 3.0 is approved, it will go out for “sponsor” balloting by January 2008.

“The sponsor ballot process and completion takes time,” said McFarland.

Final approval, called the publication date, is expected by October 2008.

Benefits of 802.11n include higher throughput (about 120Mbps real world) than the current standard and a range that’s 50 percent longer. Also, because of its multiple antennas that can stitch together a fractured signal, it eliminates many indoor spots where the signal would normally be dropped.

Parallels Desktop for Mac software has won kudos from critics and users, but the general perception of the company was that it was a startup success story. SWsoft's ownership of the company changes that view.

SWSoft, a company ...]]> (InfoWorld) – Parallels, which makes? Parallels Desktop for Mac software, acknowledged Monday that it is owned by SWSoft after a report in Fortune magazine broke news of the relationship between the companies.

Parallels Desktop for Mac software has won kudos from critics and users, but the general perception of the company was that it was a startup success story. SWsoft’s ownership of the company changes that view.

SWSoft, a company that focuses on server-side virtualization, “quietly” purchased Parallels three years ago, said Benjamin Rudolph, a Parallels spokesman. However, Parallels has operated as an independent company since then and will continue to do so, he said.

A joint press statement by Serguei Beloussov, CEO of SWsoft, and Nick Dobrovolskiy, CEO of Parallels, also acknowledged SWsoft’s purchase of Parallels but said the companies will continue to focus on different segments of the virtualization market.

“About virtualization specifically, management of both companies has always believed that these different types of virtualization each has its own advantages,” the CEOs said in the statement. “And both types can work side-by-side for maximum benefit.”

SWsoft is backed by investment from well-known venture capital firms Intel Capital, Insight Venture Partners, and Bessemer Venture Partners.

IBM made a raft of announcements Monday at its Lotusphere 2007 user conference in Orlando.

Mike Rhodin, general manager at IBM Lotus, described the moves as "the largest expansion ever" of the vendor's collaboration software. "We raided ...]]> (InfoWorld) – As IBM unveils new collaboration tools and some revamps of existing software, the company emphasized tight integration between its offerings and hooks into rival products from Microsoft.

IBM made a raft of announcements Monday at its Lotusphere 2007 user conference in Orlando.

Mike Rhodin, general manager at IBM Lotus, described the moves as “the largest expansion ever” of the vendor’s collaboration software. “We raided IBM Research and brought a lot of that into our products,” he said during a Monday conference call.

IBM is aiming the collaboration tools at business users, drawing a distinction between social networking tools like wikis and blogging for individual users and the same kind of technologies transferred to a corporate setting. For businesses, security and integration are key factors influencing whether they’ll use such software.

With that in mind, IBM introduced Lotus Connections, a combination of five integrated online tools — Profiles, Dogear, Communities, Activities, and Blogs — to help organizations provide their staff with more ways to work collaboratively.

Users can use the Profiles component to search for experts within their company on a particular topic and access a variety of information linked to that individual including blogs and bookmarks. Dogear is a bookmarking tool for tagging and sharing bookmarks, Communities helps? to establish specific work groups, and Activities provides a Web-based dashboard where users can work together on managing collaborative tasks.

IBM fully deployed all the pieces of Connections internally, using IBMers as guinea pigs, Rhodin said.

Connections is due out in the second quarter of this year.

Also new is Lotus Quickr content-sharing software, a series of connectors into desktop applications such as Notes and Microsoft’s Office, into operating systems like Microsoft’s Windows, and into repositories including those of Lotus Domino and WebSphere Portal.

A company can share content across its employees and has the option to widen the access to include its customers and partners. Quickr is due out before July. IBM then plans to have Quickr hook into its FileNet P8 enterprise content management software.

Updating existing products, IBM expects to ship the latest release of its Sametime instant messaging software in April. Sametime 7.5.1 includes tight connections to Microsoft’s Office and Outlook applications, a real-time video component, support for the Macintosh operating system on the client side, and Linux support on the server side.

IBM also showed off its Lotus Notes and Domino 8 groupware offerings expected to enter public beta testing in February and ship in the middle of 2007. Among the new features are IBM Productivity Editors to help users to create, edit, and save documents in the OpenDocument Format (ODF), a rival file format to what Microsoft uses.

IBM is also updating its portal software, WebSphere Portal Express 6.0, targeting companies with less than 1,000 staff, or similarly sized departments within enterprises looking to set up their own online portals. The software, which will be available Jan. 30,? includes document management, Web content management, and prebuilt sample Web sites as well as the Lotus Component Designer 6.0 development tool and is available. The portal software’s starting price is $2,300 per 20-user pack with a limit of 1,000 registered users.

Rhodin was also at pains to stress that all’s well with IBM’s Lotus division, which has seen plenty of ups and downs since IBM acquired Lotus in 1995. “The business is very healthy, and growth in Q4 was phenomenal,” he said, where sales of Lotus software grew 30 percent compared to the year-ago quarter.

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Under the agreement, Sun and Intel will collaborate much more closely on products than they had in the past, said Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz during a press conference in San Francisco. "Intel has agreed to really promote Solaris to help us collectively go out and build a marketplace and ...]]> (InfoWorld) – Sun and Intel announced a broad alliance Monday that will lead to Sun’s re-introduction of an Intel-based product line, the companies said.

Under the agreement, Sun and Intel will collaborate much more closely on products than they had in the past, said Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz during a press conference in San Francisco. “Intel has agreed to really promote Solaris to help us collectively go out and build a marketplace and an ecosystem,” he said. “Solaris will now be a tier 1 operating system, in the Intel definition.”

Sun will build a line of Intel servers and workstations, the first of which will be a dual-processor Xeon system, expected by the end of June. Intel, for its part, is now considering Solaris a “top tier” operating system, and the company has already had engineers working on Solaris for the past few months. Eventually, workstations and four-way Intel systems will also be added to Sun’s portfolio, Schwartz said.

The engineering relationship means that Solaris will more quickly support new Intel processor technologies, and the two companies will work together to develop next-generation networking and virtualization technologies as well as ways to speed up Solaris applications running on Intel machines.

“It means that we can collaborate on the feature sets that buyers are focused on,” said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini.

Intel wouldn’t say exactly how much it planned to spend to support Solaris on its processors, but the effort will amount to “hundreds of millions of dollars of investment over a multiyear horizon,” said Kirk Skaugen, vice president and general manager of Intel’s server group, in an interview.

The agreement will boost Solaris’s profile on Intel systems in the telecommunications and financial services markets, in particular, Skaugen said. These are two areas where Intel has traditionally backed the Linux operating system.

Asked if Monday’s news was bad news for Linux, Skaugen declined to answer. “At the end of the day, people will chose which operating system will produce the best value to customers,” he said.

Sun had abandoned Intel several years ago,? launching a line of servers with chips from AMD in late 2003. Sun also makes its own line of Sparc and UltraSparc processors.

At the time, Sun hailed AMD’s 64-bit Opteron chip and planned to use it in two-and four-way servers. But now, a return to Intel chips will allow Sun to sell its Solaris OS to a wider market and to offer a wider range of options to data center administrators, who are increasingly replacing Unix machines that use RISC? processors with cheaper x86-based servers, according to Nathaniel Martinez, an analyst with IDC.

The news comes as a relief to Intel,? which announced another disappointing quarter of sales on Jan. 16, reporting revenue that was 39 percent lower than last year. Intel has endured a tumultuous year as Otellini has tried to recover profits by? laying off 10,500 workers and? selling several business divisions.

Intel has upgraded its entire line of processors in recent months, making up for an era when it was criticized for making chips that used more watts and created more heat than AMD’s Opteron processor. Intel’s power-efficient new server chips include the “Woodcrest” dual-core Xeon 5100 and the? ”Clovertown” quad-core Xeon 5300.

Intel’s rival AMD said it looked forward to continuing to supply Sun with server chips. “From an AMD standpoint, Intel backing Solaris would expand the market, expand the x86 ecosystem, which is good for all of us,” said Phil Hughes, an AMD spokesman.

AMD also sells Opteron chips to Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM, but Sun has one of the biggest portfolios of server platforms on the market, he said.

“Everything we’ve been told is that this is complementary to the AMD-Sun relationship. Sun is still a valuable and strategic AMD partner, and we are continuing to collaborate with them on our silicon and system-level road maps, and they are continuing to optimize platforms for our next-generation processors.”

AMD plans to release its first quad-core chip, the “Barcelona” version of Opteron, in mid-2007 and expects server vendors to quickly begin selling systems including the chip.

This article was updated on January 22, 2007