Florencio Benson

There's no question that software piracy is a global problem with a heavy financial impact. A May 2009 report by the Business Software Alliance and IDC estimated that 20% of software programs installed in the U.S. last year were unauthorized copies. But just how heavy it is is a matter of debate. Worldwide, the figure is 41%, with an estimated financial impact of $53 billion - a figure based on the retail value of the pirated PC software.

If it were, the BSA's global loss figure of $53 billion would drop sharply, they maintain. "Obviously, not every piece of pirated software will be replaced immediately with legitimate software if underlicensing is addressed or sources of pirated stuff dry up," acknowledges Dale Curtis, the BSA's vice president of communications. But critics of the study say it fails to account for the possibility that pirated software could be replaced with Linux or other open-source options. But he says that over the years, IDC has found "a very strong correlation between piracy rates and software sales. One country that wasn't included is Canada - and that doesn't sit right with Michael Geist, a professor at the University of Ottawa. "What the BSA did not disclose is that the 2009 report on Canada (whose piracy rate declined from 33% to 32% in the study) were guesses since Canadian firms and users were not surveyed. In country after country, as the piracy rate falls, legitimate sales go up." A second criticism of the report is that its country-by-country figures are partly based on the results of an annual survey that in 2009 covered 24 countries. While the study makes seemingly authoritative claims about the state of Canadian piracy, the reality is that IDC . . . did not bother to survey in Canada," Geist wrote in a May 27 blog post.

Further, he says Canadian users were surveyed the previous year, and "there is no reason to assume large changes in results from one year to the next." Ivan Png, a professor of information systems and economics at the University of Singapore, says the BSA and IDC should explain how they applied the results from the 24 countries surveyed to all of the other countries not surveyed. "IDC should make the methodology transparent," Png says. Curtis responds that the study "is not a guess, nor is it a scientific measurement, nor is it based primarily on a survey of software users, as Geist suggests." A survey of 6,200 users is only a piece of the model, Curtis says.

Oracle's first-quarter net income rose by 4 percent year-over-year to US$1.1 billion, but revenue fell by 5 percent to $5.1 billion, the company said Wednesday. New software license sales fell 17 percent year-over-year to $1 billion, indicating that customers are still reluctant to make new software investments amid the ongoing recession. Earnings per share were $0.22. Excluding one-time charges, Oracle reported earnings per share of $0.30, partly meeting the expectations of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters, who had on average predicted earnings of $0.30 per share and $5.25 billion in revenue.

Oracle managed to increase profits even as revenue fell by "substantially improving" its operating margins, company President Safra Catz said in a statement. Associated expenses were just $226 million, meaning the profit margin for this part of Oracle's business was greater than 90 percent. Oracle's results were also bolstered by growth in revenue for software license updates and support, which jumped 6 percent to $3.1 billion. Oracle blamed the dip in new license sales partly on weak business at other software vendors. "They sold less of their applications, and so they drive less database with them," Catz said in a conference call. Oracle announced plans to acquire Sun earlier this year, but the acquisition is being held up by an antitrust review by European authorities.

The earnings report comes a day after Oracle announced a new Exadata data warehousing and OLTP (online transaction processing) appliance jointly developed with Sun Microsystems. Oracle executives offered no new details about the deal Wednesday, but said integration planning work is proceeding. The company is well-positioned to compete against IBM with its recently updated database and middleware products, he said. During the call, CEO Larry Ellison repeatedly targeted IBM, who Oracle will soon be battling in both software and hardware markets. Oracle shares were down $0.78 in after-hours trading to $21.35.

Lawmakers called upon the Transportation Security Administration and private sector companies to quickly re-establish a nationwide registered traveler program to help frequent travelers get through airport security checkpoints faster. Both lawmakers and vendors said the TSA had not done enough to support the registered traveler program and in fact distanced itself from the effort over the past year. The calls came after the abrupt closure earlier this year of Verified identity Pass Inc. (VIP), the largest provider of registered traveler services, and the subsequent shutting of services by two other vendors that offered the same service. The TSA, meanwhile, insisted that the program did little to improve security.

At a hearing on the future of the registered traveler program Wednesday, members of a House subcommittee on Homeland Security urged the TSA and private vendors to work together to quickly restore the service. The agency said that just because members of such programs had been pre-screened didn't eliminate the need for them to go through airport security checks like everyone else. The hearing came on the same day an investment banking firm, Henry Inc., said it had signed a letter of intent to buy VIP's assets and relaunch the service by the end of the year." U.S. Rep. At the same time, private sector companies need to find a model "that can support a security benefit, but which does not rely on one," she said. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), the subcommittee chairwoman, expressed hope that the TSA would make a "good faith effort" to explore a security benefit, or an additional layer of security vetting, for the registered traveler program. Even if passengers must still go through a security screeening, these companies can still offer the convenience of getting their customers through the process quicker, such as using a separate member-only line at security checkpoints.

Since 2005, the TSA has piloted several iterations of the program with private sector companies. The registered traveler program was established under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act (ATSA). It authorizes the TSA to implement trusted passenger programs to speed up the security screening of passengers who have submitted to comprehensive background and security checks. The biggest of them was VIP, which offered a registered traveler service called "Clear" at 21 major airports. The announcement raised immediate concerns about the data that VIP had collected as part of its Clear service, including Social Security and credit card number and home address. The company, which had signed up more than 200,000 subscribers, stopped service in June saying it had run out of money.

The company had also collected fingerprints, iris scans and digital images of customers' faces. Soon after Clear stopped its service, rivals Fast Lane Option Corp . (Flo) and Vigilant Solutions also shut down their services. Many who had paid a $199 annual fee were unable to get refunds. During the hearing, U.S. Rep. Going forward, the TSA needs to take the lead in supporting the program, Thompson and others said. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said it is Congress' intent that such "a quick closing of business" does not happen again. "The traveling public deserves better," Thompson said.

Much of the reason the program is in disarray is because the TSA failed to support the effort, witnesses said. Despite the mandate from Congress, the TSA has not fully implemented the use of biometrics as a primary form of identification, Fischer said, nor has it used background screening to vet those using the RT lanes as it was supposed to. While the registered traveler program at one time was expected to provide add an additional layer of security at airports, today it is little more than a convenience for travelers willing to pay for it, they said. "To date, while the private sector has invested over $250 million and upheld its side of the partnership, the TSA has not," said Fred Fischer, managing partner at Flo Corp. Though the TSA at one point collected $28 per passenger to do a so-called Security Threat Assessment (STA) of passengers who had signed up for registered traveler programs, not one applicant was ever vetted using a criminal history records check, he claimed. John Sammon, an assistant administrator at the TSA, said that based on the pilot programs and the agency's own insight, registered traveler programs do not offer any additional security.

As a result, the promised security benefits of the registered traveler program have yet to be realized, he said. He said the TSA stopped doing security threat analysis for registered traveler programs because there was little value to be gained. "The prospect of a terrorist not identified on a watch list raised questions about the viability of a registered traveler program," he said. Going forward, the TSA will work with private vendors to identify programs that will support registered travelers programs, he said. After an evaluation of the pilot programs, the TSA concluded that registered traveler programs "do not provide any additional levels of security," he said. However, from a security standpoint, such passengers will still be subject to the same security checks as other ticketed passengers, he said.

If you're hooked on posting updates on Facebook and Twitter, there's a good chance you have more money and are more urban than your fellow U.S. citizens, according to a new study by The Nielsen Co. In fact, Facebook users are more affluent than their social networking counterparts on Myspace, the study showed. The survey, which studied the top seven social networking sites, showed that Facebook users generally have an "upscale profile." Nielsen also noted that people who are more affluent than the other two-thirds of the population are 25% more likely to use Facebook than those in the the lower third. And bloggers and Twitterers tend to live in urban areas. "Nielsen's online data shows that about half of the U.S. population visited a social networking Web site in the last year and that number grows every quarter," said Wils Corrigan, an associate vice president with Nielsen. And conversely, those in the bottom third of the financial chart are 37% more likely to use MySpace than those in the top third.

In fact, the number of 55-and-older Facebook users showed staggering growth - 513.7% - in the last six months, the digital consulting firm said. Other recent studies have shown that as Facebook and Twitter grow in popularity , their user bases are growing older . A July report released by iStrategyLabs shows that while the number of Facebook's U.S. high school and college-age users declined over the past six months, its popularity among the 55-and-older crowd is booming. That means Facebook and Twitter, which both have shown phenomenal growth in the past year, apparently appeal to an older, wealthier demographic. And with expectations mounting for Twitter executives to finally come out with a business plan by the end of the year , the demographics of the site's users will have to be factored into the equation.

Startup Cloudera is introducing a set of applications on Friday for working with Hadoop, the open-source framework for large-scale data processing and analysis. It allows an application workload to be spread over clusters of commodity hardware, and also includes a distributed file system. Cloudera, which provides Hadoop support to enterprises, developed the new browser-based application suite to simplify the process of using Hadoop, according to CEO Mike Olson. "It's an easy-to-use GUI suitable for people who don't have a lot of Hadoop expertise," Olson said. "The big Web properties with sophisticated and talented PhDs have been successful [with it], but ordinary IT shops ... have had a harder time." Hadoop is known for its behind-the-scenes role crunching oceans of information for Web operations like Facebook and Yahoo. But although the technology is "at its best" when data volumes get into multiple terabytes, Hadoop has relevance for a wide variety of companies, according to Olson. "It's increasingly easy to get your hands on that much data these days," especially from machine-generated information like Web logs, he said.

Cloudera and its partners are fine-tuning the suite, which is now in beta, before issuing a general release. The browser-based application set is supported on Windows, Mac and Linux, and includes four modules: a file browser; a tool for creating, executing and archiving jobs; a tool for monitoring the status of jobs; and a "cluster health dashboard" for keeping tabs on a cluster's performance. Hadoop needs many more tools like it, according to analyst Curt Monash of Monash Research. "If Hadoop is to consistently handle workloads as diverse and demanding as those of [massively parallel processing] relational DBMSes, it needs a lot of tools and infrastructure," Monash said via e-mail. "The three leaders in developing those are Yahoo, Cloudera, and Facebook. There's a long way to go."

Google is rich, with a market cap of $183 billion - that's billion with a "b" - already 71 percent the value of its much more established archrival Microsoft. For several years, Google seemed to be focused on Web-based collaboration tools, with its Blogger.com service and acqusition of JotSpot (now called Google Wave) as prime examples. With those resources, Google has created more and more software products in an attempt to build a sustainable business outside of the search-based ads that account for most of its revenue - and in attempt to be the center of your computing universe. But more recently, Google has moved into the cloud business, producing one product after another in a pattern that shows clearly a desire to replace the desktop paradigm - which has Microsoft's Windows and Microsoft Office at its core.

The forthcoming Google Chrome OS is the baldest statement of that mission, redefining a laptop into a Net appliance that relies almost entirely on the cloud for the apps people would use routinely. Google has designs to replace the desktop with the cloud, and Microsoft with itself. But that's just the latest salvo. Microsoft has responded to this direct strike at its business with its cloud/desktop hybrid version of Office, the forthcoming Office 2010 Web Apps. Google has already launched its Google Apps set of services, which are starting to be taken seriously even by large companies and government agencies to handle e-mail, word processing, and more.

But Google keeps pushing: Its still-in-beta Google Wave promises to attack one of Microsoft's most beloved products, its SharePoint collaboration software. Scheier's reporting reveals where Google Apps is a serious option, where it is not, and where the jury is still out. InfoWorld has put together a package of articles that explores Google's attempt to become the center of everyone's technology universe: Robert L. Scheier's "Can Google really hack it in business?" looks at Google Apps and evaluates how seriously businesses can take each of its components, such as Gmail and Google Docs. Galen Gruman has put together a slideshow of Google's business applications, "A tour of Google's business apps," so you can see in one place all the options Google wants to tempt you with. Neil McAllister debunks the myths around the Chrome OS and explains exactly what Google has promised. Neil McAllister pits Google Docs against Microsoft's Office Web apps in an InfoWorld Test Center head-to-head comparison, "Office suites in the cloud." Galen Gruman examines whether Google's mobile OS, Android, has what it takes to provide a real challenge to Apple's widely admired iPhone in his analysis "Android 2.0: The iPhone killer at last?" and in his Test Center comparison, "Deathmatch: Motorola Droid versus iPhone." Several of InfoWorld's experts examine the Chrome OS's potential for creating a new type of computing device that might replace - or at least rival - the traditional laptop and netbook.

Randall C. Kennedy argues that the Chrome OS is destined to fail, and shows how Microsoft could easily kill off the Chrome OS. Kennedy also provides a visual tour of the early beta Chrome OS so you can see what it actually is. This article, "Can Google succeed outside of search?," was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Eric Knorr tells why he can't wait for a "Chromebook." And Bill Snyder explains why the Chrome OS is a welcome addition to our computing options, not a replacement for existing ones. Follow the latest developments on cloud computing, Google, Google Apps, and Chrome OS at InfoWorld.com.

The holiday season is almost here, and even in a recession huge numbers of people will likely be shopping online for gifts this year. It's also a great time for hackers looking to steal data and money from the unwary millions expected to search for great deals online. The rush by shoppers to the Web makes the season a great time for online retailers. The growth of holiday hackers has annually prompted security analysts, identity theft awareness groups and various government agencies to come up with lists of precautions that consumers can take to avoid becoming a victim of online fraud.

For those unwary consumers, Computerworld this year offers a handy list of tips that can help maximize the their exposure to online fraud. Such lists can prove a benefit to consumers, but unfortunately some people ignore it. Tip #1 : Open all attachments from strangers and click on all embedded links in such e-mail messages. All a hacker needs to do is find computer users who instinctively open e-mail messages from strangers, even those who write in a foreign language. Such actions remain one of the most effective ways to provide thieves with personal information and financial data.

The action can open the door to keystroke loggers, rootkits or Trojan horse programs. Once installed, hackers gain unfettered access to personal data and can even remotely control and administer systems from anywhere. Crooks can also easily install backdoors to easily steal data without attracting any attention. Tip #2 Respond to Dr (Mrs.) Mariam Abacha, whose name is used by many hackers who say they have close friends and relatives in Nigeria who have recently been widowed or deposed in a military coup and need your help to get their millions of dollars out of the country. And to make sure to provide bank account information, login credentials, date of birth and mother's maiden name so that they can wire the reward directly into a checking account in time for the holidays. Users are told they will undoubtedly be rewarded for helping to get their 'well-packed trunk boxes' full of cash out of Nigeria.

Tip #3 Install a peer-to-peer file-sharing client on your PC. and configure it so all files, including bank account, Social Security and credit card numbers along with copies of mortgage and tax return documents, are easily available to anyone on the same P2P network. It saves hackers from spending too much time and effort trying to access your PC. Clever sequences such as 123456 and abcdef and your firstname.lastname all make fine, easy-to-remember default passwords for you and for hackers. Your personal data will stream over the Internet while you check out what songs you can download for free without getting sued by the RIAA. Tip #4 Come up with passwords that are easy to crack. For maximum exposure, keep passwords short, don't mix alphabets and numerals and use the same password for all accounts. Keeping operating systems properly patched and anti-virus and anti-spyware tools updated make life hard for hackers.

Tip #5 Avoid installing the latest anti-malware tools and security updates. Users can help them out by making sure their anti-virus software and anti-spyware tools are at least 18-months out of date, or not using them at all. Good luck! Either way, it's very likely that your computer will be infected with a full spectrum of malware.