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Phish Finders Unite

Microsoft has joined forces with eBay, PayPal, and Visa to form a coalition of anti-phishing forces called the Phish Report Network. The new group seeks to allow any company being victimized by phishing attacks to immediately and securely report fraudulent Web sites to a central database, operated by WholeSecurity. For a fee, subscribing companies can access this database of known phishing sites to protect themselves and their customers by blocking access to the site. According to the group, phishing attacks are the fastest growing form of spam and are growing at a rate of 24 percent every month, according to a phishing survey from August to December of 2004.

MySQL Offers IP Indemnification for Open Source Database

Open-source database developer MySQL announced yesterday that it will begin providing its customers with intellectual property indemnification to protect them from any patent, trade secret, or copyright infringement lawsuits in the future. IP indemnification is part of the new "MySQL Network" support packages that MySQL announced at the LinuxWorld show in Boston. In addition to IP indemnification, the MySQL Network packages offer enhanced support, certification with applications, access to the MySQL knowledge base, access to Update Advisor (a new service that alerts users to updated MySQL software), and Technical Alert Advisor, which notifies users of issues related to their specific computing environment before they cause problems. MySQL Network is available now for 11 major platforms, including Windows Server 2003, Unix, and Linux, and costs from $595 to $4,995 for an annual subscription.

Microsoft Hosting Web Cast on IP Indemnification

Microsoft will be hosting a Webcast on intellectual property indemnification on its Web site today starting at 11:00 a.m. PST. The event, "Linking the Market Forces and Indemnification: What This Means to Me," will feature IDC analysts Stephen Graham and Frank Gens, and will attempt to provide answers to questions such as, "Why is indemnification suddenly becoming an issue? What are the market forces driving this to the forefront? And what market characteristics should I monitor to make sure I'm on top of the issue?" Microsoft is looking to bring the IP indemnification issue to the forefront because it gives it an advantage over Linux, although the extent of that advantage is debatable. According to the Yankee Group, Microsoft offers some of the strongest IP indemnification of any of the system vendors, and says that Microsoft's IP indemnification gives it an economical advantage over Linux (see "Microsoft's Strong IP Protections Give Windows an Advantage," in the January 19, 2005, issue of this newsletter).

You can register for the Webcast online.

SecurityVault Implements 'Virtual' Drives That Are 'Google-Proof'

Rocket Software launched new "Google-proof" security software this week that is designed to prevent unauthorized users from accessing files by creating a virtual hard drive that is invisible to everybody but the intended user. The new product, SecurityVault, enables users to create secure "lockboxes" for encrypting confidential data. When a lockbox is opened, a new drive letter is automatically added to the user's system, such as the "K" drive, and users can open this drive as they would any other drive. The key to the system is that, when the lockbox is closed, the drive letter is removed, making the disk drive itself invisible, along with all traces of the data stored inside, thereby preventing it from being crawled by Google Desktop, Rocket claims. SecurityVault runs on Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and pricing starts at $60.

Intel Talks Up Dual-Core Chips

If Intel wants anything, it is to prevent being perceived as being behind rival Advanced Micro Devices, which is angling to get its dual-core Opteron chips into the market sometime this summer. Intel desperately wants to get its "Potomac" and "Cranford" Xeon MPs, which have 64-bit memory extensions and HyperThreading simultaneous multithreading on each single-core chip, into the field ahead of the dual-core Opterons.

According to the latest Intel roadmaps, the Potomac and Cranford Xeon MP processors are being collectively grouped together as the "Truland" family of chips, and they could be announced at Intel Developer Forum in early March, for delivery in late March or early April. Intel will be delivering a Pentium 4 Extreme Edition for high-end gaming machines and workstations, but this won't be much good in servers. While Intel says it has over ten multicore projects underway in the labs, what it really needs in order to compete with Opterons in the server space is dual-core Xeon DPs and MPs and dual-core Itaniums. The "Dempsey" dual-core Xeons, probably for two-way machines, and probably using 65 nanometer processes, are expected in early 2006. That gives AMD about a six-month lead on Intel in the server racket. Intel is clearly betting that 64-bit support plus HyperThreading are good enough against dual-core Opterons without HyperThreading. We'll see.

The current implementation of the "Montecito" dual-core Itaniums (the original Montecito was single-core and was due last year) is now expected to start shipping at the end of 2005, and is expected to be certified in systems beginning in early 2006. Montecitos are expected to have an incredible 1.7 billion transistors, almost all of which covers the 24 MB of L3 cache memory on the chips. They are expected to run at between 1.6 GHz (like the current Itanium 2s) and 2 GHz. Montecitos will, however, have about three times the performance per socket, thanks to HyperThreading and other tweaks. Moreover, Montecito will only burn 100 watts, compared with the 130 watts of the "Madison" Itanium 2s.

IBM Launches Faster 'Irwindale' Xeon Servers

IBM will this week deliver versions of its xSeries and BladeCenter servers that employ the new "Irwindale" Xeon DP processor from Intel. The Irwindale chip is a variant of the 64-bit "Nocona" processor, except that it has 2 MB of L2 cache memory as well as the new Demand Based Switching and SpeedStep power management and Execute Disable security enhancement. It has an 800 MHz frontside bus, just like the Nocona chip, which means it can plug into the exact same slots (see the separate story in this issue for more on the Irwindale chip).

IBM says that the xSeries and BladeCenter blade servers equipped with the new Irwindale chips, which have twice as much cache memory as the Noconas, can provide as much as an 18 percent performance boost, according to Intel's internal benchmarks. But the Irwindales are expected to run at the same clock speeds as the Noconas, so this will only be true on applications that can make use of that larger cache.

IBM says that the Irwindale chips will ship in four of its two-way servers and the HS20 two-way blade servers by the end of February. The xSeries 226 is a 4U tower or rack machine that supports from 512 MB to 16 GB of main memory, and 1.8 TB of internal SCSI or 1 TB of internal SATA disks, and has three PCI-X, two PCI, and one PCI-Express slot. It costs $1,225 with a single Irwindale chip running at 3 GHz plus 512 MB of memory and no disk; it costs $1,475 to buy the machine with a three-year warranty. The xSeries 236 is a slightly larger 5U tower or rack server that supports the same memory configurations, but has room for nine disks. It has three PCI-X, two PC-Express, and one PCI slot. It comes with a three-year warranty and costs $2,399 with a single 3 GHz processor, 1 GB of main memory, no disks, and a three-year warranty. The xSeries 336 is a 1U, rack-mounted server that can house two disk drives (300 GB SCSI Or 250 GB SATA) and has two PCI-X slots and an optional PCI-Express slot. It supports up to 16 GB of main memory as well, and costs $2,359 in a base configuration (1 GB of memory, one 3 GHz chip, no disk, and a three-year warranty). And, finally, the xSeries 346 is a 2U rack-mounted server with four PCI-X or two PCI-X and two PCI-Express slots that has the same memory expansion as the other Irwindale-based xSeries machines being announced today. A base xSeries 346 comes with one 3 Ghz processor and 1 GB of main memory; it costs $2,745 with that three-year warranty. IBM did not provide pricing on the HS20 blades.

Programmable Foot Switches Can Take Over Mouse Clicks, Keyboard Functions

Operating a computer today is a predominantly a hands-oriented activity, but it doesn't have to be. A company in Washington state called Kinesis makes programmable foot switches that allow users to perform mouse and keyboard functions with their feet. The company has been making its switches, which are PS/2 and USB compatible, for medical applications since 1998. Last month the company rolled out a new variety of foot switch, called the Savant Elite, which it hopes will be a hit among office workers, programmers, data entry personnel, and accountants, along with medical and dental offices. "Not only can you perform mouse clicks with your feet, but you can move any heavily used keyboard activity to your feet, thereby reducing the workload on your upper body," says Jon Biggs, the company's director of sales and marketing. The Savant Elite switches are available with one to four switches, and cost from $99 to $149.