Help Desk
Internet News.com, 3/19/04: HP Channels Partners for SMBs
By Michael Singer
HP (Quote, Chart) is fortifying its $750 million Smart Office promise with the introduction of a host of hardware and services this week.
The Palo Alto, Calif.-based computer and printer maker Monday is scheduled to highlight the initiative aimed at the more than 22.9 million small to medium-sized businesses (SMB) in the United States.
The program is one way HP is hoping to differentiate itself from low-price rival Dell (Quote, Chart) and sales champ IBM (Quote, Chart). HP's pitch is to offer a bevy of Intel-based laptops, microtowers, workstations and printers to entice new customers.
HP said it has five new services designed from the bottom up a result of conversations with its SMB partners including an IT professional help desk that offers level 2 and level 3 help desk support. The company is also offering two separate financing options. The program focuses on mobility and wireless, imaging and printing, servers and storage as well as Web development and even online training courses.
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IT Management
Internetnews.com, 3/19/04: Q&A: David Gee, VP of Adaptive Management, HP
By Clint Boulton
HP (Quote, Chart) has been filling gaps in its OpenView management software platform through acquisitions. Just last week, the company moved to buy identity management software maker TruLogica.
But it's been shopping for months, striking five other deals deals since July: the SelectAccess security assets from Baltimore Technologies; Talking Blocks for Web services management; Persist Technologies for information lifecycle management; and Novadigm and Consera for IT automation.
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Security
eWeek, 3/20/04:Fast-Moving Worm Crashes Computers
By Dennis Fisher
A new, fast-moving worm hit the Internet early Saturday morning and began spreading rapidly, generating huge amounts of traffic in its attempts to propagate. Known as Witty, the worm exploits a hole in Internet Security Systems Inc.'s BlackIce products.
Unlike most worms, which exist for the lone purpose of spreading themselves, Witty is capable of corrupting the hard drives of infected machines, preventing normal operation of the PC and eventually causing it to crash. The worm attacks via random UDP ports; however, it always comes from UDP source port 4000, according to various analyses of the code by security experts. Infected machines will begin sending out large amounts of UDP traffic as the worm attempts to infect other machines.
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C|net, 3/22/04: Technology solution to slicing spam lags
By Stefanie Olsen
Lawsuits filed by some of the Web's biggest players against junk e-mailers have portrayed an industry united in the war against spam--but there are few signs of collaboration in developing technology standards that could be more effective in slowing the deluge.
America Online, EarthLink, Microsoft and Yahoo scored a major publicity coup earlier this month, when they launched their first joint legal assault against spammers. The suits claim that hundreds of unnamed defendants sent messages using false e-mail addresses--a violation of the newly enacted federal Can-Spam Act.
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Utility Computing
C|net, 3/22/04: IBM sharpens utility computing edge
By Martin LaMonica
IBM is upping the stakes in the race to become the dominant provider of utility computing services with a plan to build out its data centers worldwide with sophisticated software and flexible service offerings.
Over the course of the year, Big Blue will upgrade its 32 data centers around the world with cutting-edge management software and tools, the company told CNET News.com. Once installed, the new software will allow IBM to offer customers a range of services in an a la carte fashion and accelerate its utility computing push, the company said.
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Collaborative Technologies
The New York Times Magazine, 3/21/04: The Honesty Virus
By CLIVE THOMPSON
Everyone tells a little white lie now and then. But a Cornell professor recently claimed to have established the truth of a curious proposition: We fib less frequently when we're online than when we're talking in person. Jeffrey Hancock asked 30 of his undergraduates to record all of their communications -- and all of their lies -- over the course of a week. When he tallied the results, he found that the students had mishandled the truth in about one-quarter of all face-to-face conversations, and in a whopping 37 percent of phone calls. But when they went into cyberspace, they turned into Boy Scouts: only 1 in 5 instant-messaging chats contained a lie, and barely 14 percent of e-mail messages were dishonest.
Obviously, you can't make sweeping generalizations about society on the basis of college students' behavior. (And there's also something rather odd about asking people to be honest about how often they lie.) But still, Hancock's results were intriguing, not least because they upend some of our primary expectations about life on the Net.
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Time Passes
C|net, 3/19/04: CNET Networks buys EDventure Holdings
CNET Networks said Friday that it has acquired technology content specialist EDventure Holdings, including the company's array of IT industry publications and conferences. Founded by Internet notable Esther Dyson, New York-based EDventure is best known for its monthly magazine, Release 1.0, and its long-running annual business summit, PC Forum.
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