This article first appeared on InformationWeek.com, and was written by Charles Babcock.

Around the breakfast table at VMworld, attendees from places like Calgary, Little Rock and
Charleston, S.C., remarked on how Ubuntu, Microsoft and Red Hat were barely visible at the
show this year. Microsoft had a little booth I never succeeded in spotting; Red Hat had a 10-by-
10 on the perimeter. It all suddenly seemed so obvious.

Microsoft, Red Hat and Ubuntu are all operating system vendors heavily invested in some other
form of virtualization than VMware's. And they're all wary of VMware's widening ambitions
and description of a future operating system for the data center, based on its own virtualization
layer. Microsoft prefers to talk about Hyper-V and its management component, Virtual Machine
Manager in Systems Center. Red Hat is sticking to its open source guns and going with KVM.
Ubuntu also packages up KVM and Xen.

What makes the operating system vendors nervous is that VMware CEO Paul Maritz talks as
if the operating system has become irrelevant. Maritz Tuesday gave a straight forward talk on
how the next phase of VMware's product line will help generate a more flexible data center.
Afterward at a meeting with the press, he sounded more combative. In the past innovation has
occurred at the operating system level, he said. (Maritz should know. When he was at Microsoft,
he oversaw the development and launch of Windows 95, Windows NT and Windows 2000.)

"Now innovation is occurring below and above the operating system, at the virtualization
layer and in applications," he said. There hasn't been any real innovation at the operating
system level in many years, he added. Operating systems "aren't going to disappear," he said.
They're "just one of several components" being managed by the hypervisor and its virtual
machine management infrastructure.

These perceptions, if correct, are disruptive to operating system-based business models.
Microsoft itself has an ongoing commitment to virtualization in the operating system rather than
concentrating on it as a separate management layer. Microsoft can line up many resources behind
that approach and tie virtual machine operation into its Azure cloud services. But it knows it
needs more time to build out all the functionality that VMware is talking about.

That may explain why on Aug. 31 it took out a full page ad in USA Today--distributed in hotels
around the Moscone Center--urging customers not to sign three-year contracts with VMware.
The ad warned VMware customers: "...signing up for a three-year virtualization commitment
may lock you into a vendor that cannot provide you with the breadth of technology, flexibility or
scale that you'll need to build a complete cloud computing environment," said the ad signed by
Brad Anderson, corporate VP for servers and tools.
"Microsoft warning about vendor lock-in is a severe case of the pot calling the kettle black,"
responded Maritz that day at VMworld.

Indeed, Microsoft may sense the same thing that VMware does: virtualization is yielding new

vantage points through which the future of the data center may be managed, if not controlled.
Microsoft is nervous because it knows a thing or two about chokepoints.

Microsoft is also leery of VMware's push to help developers produce applications for the future
data center architecture, described this year as the "private cloud." If VMware moves into a
position where it is the trusted provider of tools to cloud developers -- it's taking a giant step
in that direction with its SpringSource unit -- that's a threat to Microsoft's predominance on
another front. Given enough time, Microsoft will match up its .Net and Visual Studio with its
Azure cloud infrastructure. But there's a large part of the developer universe not yet committed to
Azure.

SpringSource and its Spring Framework addresses much of the non-Microsoft world. Spring
produces lightweight Java applications that compile to a standard byte code that runs in a Java
virtual machine. Likewise, the .Net language, C#, produces applications that compile to a byte
code that runs in .Net's Common Language Infrastructure. Microsoft's ability to do this exists in
the public arena through the Mono's project's ability to reproduce that byte code. The byte codes
are close together in that both are based on a shared ANSI standard antecedent.

It's conceivable that in less than three year's time, the Spring Framework will allow .Net
programmers to use Spring to produce applications for VMware clouds, and such a capability
could seriously impact Microsoft's hold on a key asset, its own developer base. It would prefer
that .Net developers be directed only toward Azure and the many options it plans for cloud
computing there.

So it's a different VMware that came out for VMworld this year. The show started six years
ago with 1,400 attendees. In this, its seventh edition, 17,021 showed up. And a brassier, more
confident VMware showed up as well.

That was evident in the short film that preceded Maritz' remarks on Tuesday. Much of what the
VMware brass had to say had to do with moving the virtualized part of the data center toward
cloud computing. The film short attempted to solicit the meaning of the cloud from an oracle,
who looked a lot like the female oracle in the movie, The Matrix. The scene suddenly shifted
to a round office tower like the type found at Oracle's campus in Redwood Shores. The camera
panned up to the top where, barely visible in the cloud descending over it, was the name Oracle.
A voice over made a dismissive remark about cloud computing, as if it was quoting from a Larry
Ellison's script. The audience laughed. No one is invested in dissing the cloud any more.

Wait a minute. Oracle wants to be a virtualization vendor, doesn't it? But virtualization leads to
the cloud. Oh, we didn't think about that. Oh. I guess we better come up with a cloud strategy.

VMware in the past has gone out of its way to sound like a good partner and a supplier of a base
technology that will fit into the big guy's shops. Now it sounds like it's willing to crowd the big
guys on their own turf. And I'm at a loss to see what is going to stop it from doing so.

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This article first appeared on InfoWorld, and was written by Ted Samson.

MalCon organizers want us to believe that security community can benefit from an event showcasing and teaching malware.

Anyone who was ever concerned by the concept of hacking conventions such as Black Hat -- which has evolved into a reputable venue for security defenders -- should brace themselves: An event called MalCon is on the horizon, which will provide a fine venue for malware creators to hone their craft, as well as, theoretically, an opportunity for malware fighters to bolster their arsenal to fight malware.

The organizers of the MalCon, which will take place in Mumbai and Pune, India, have attempted to put a positive spin on the event, as noted by security guru Brian Krebs. According to the conference website, MalCon is "the worlds [sic] first platform bringing together Malware and Information Security Researchers from across the globe to share key research insights into building the next generation malwares."

In addition to showcasing the top whitepaper submissions from malware researchers and coders, the event will offer training workshops on topics such as coding malware, analyzing malware, and reverse engineering. Said workshops are recommended for those who "[want] to develop or code [their] own virus / malware for research" (italics are mine) and for those who "aspire to advance their professional skills in security research and malware analysis."

The whole event sounds about as wholesome, innocent, and security-minded as a nuclear-bomb building convention in Tehran. Sure, some people might attend to learn a bit more about fighting malware, but it's bound to be more of a magnet for ne'er-do-wells who are eager to put their newfound knowledge to malicious use.

I ran it by InfoWorld Security Adviser blogger Roger Grimes for a reality check, and here's what he had to say: "No good can come from the conference. It's probably being held in India because there are a lot of 'legitimate' companies there, very out in the open, that produce bad software for other people.

"There have been similar projects before: virus coding books (plenty of them), dozens of malware ezines, etc., and none add to the good side of the equation," he added.

The conference coordinator Rajshekhar Murthy attempted to put a positive spin on the conference, Krebs reported. "While a conference can be done by inviting the best / well known security experts who can share statistics, slides and 'analysis' of malwares, it is not of any benefit to the community today except that of awareness. The need of MalCon conference is [to] bridge that ignored gap between security companies and malcoders. They have to get on a common platform and talk to each other."

And the capper from Murthy: "Just like the concept of 'ethical hacking' has helped organizations to see that hackers are not all that bad, it is time to accept that 'ethical malcoding' is required to research, identify and mitigate newer malwares in a 'proactive' way.'"

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“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” - Albert Einstein 

For those of you that are following the blog, you may be interested to know that I am writing this post from my new Latitude E4300. Overall, I am fairly impressed with the combination of speed and portability. Usually you have to sacrifice one for the other. But I will leave that review for a different post. For anyone who has purchased a computer from I.T.NOW in the past year, you will truly be amazed by my next confession. I am running Vista on my new laptop. I also must confess that this is my third attempt at converting to Vista. Rumor has it that there is currently a pool going on at I.T.NOW betting on when I will switch back to XP (email Jason if you want in on it).  So why do I run Vista when I tell all of my customers to steer clear of it? I guess it is just one of the things I have to know. I can walk anyone through pretty much all functions of XP without having a computer in front of me, so it is time to achieve that same level of familiarity with Vista. That and when I try to install XP on my laptop, the solid state disk appears to cause a blue screen, in spite of how many things I have tried (and I have sadly tried several times).

So, what am I doing differently this time to ensure that I get a different result and don’t go insane? Here are a few tips for those of you who for one reason or another are on the Vista bus.

·         Don’t complain about it in front of your Mac friends. They will just talk to you about the latest “I’m a Mac” commercial and make you regret your decision.

·         Feed the beast. If you don’t have 4GB of memory, upgrade. If you don’t have a video card, consider adding one. If you can use a faster hard drive (10,000 RPM Raptor or a Solid State Disk), you won’t regret the price.

·         Unvistafy Vista. Part of what makes Vista more secure than XP is all of the extra layers of security, which means you have to click a lot more than you would have to on an XP machine. The technician in me has to warn you that this will make Vista less secure. But you wish you had XP, so this isn’t that big of a deal. Wired Magazine has a great Wiki on some steps you can take to clean up Vista.

·         Relax. In less than two years, you will get to do it all over again with Windows 7

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As computers progress and get cheaper, it is often easier and cheaper to replace a computer than it is to fix it. Some of our clients aren’t used to this approach. Many have been using computers since they cost $5,000 and are accustomed to maximizing the investment by getting as much use as possible out of the computer. Here are some of the reasons I give when I tell clients their money would be better spent replacing a problematic PC older than 3 years:

• Productivity. Almost everyone who gets a new computer talks about how much faster it is compared to the old one. For business owners, that means your employees can be more productive, and hopefully make you more money.
• Data protection. While it is always good to test your backup strategy, doing so by experiencing a failed hard drive is not what I would recommend. A 3+year old hard drive is in some cases a ticking time bomb. It is much easier to replace a computer before the hard drive dies.
• New programs and features. Often times, companies contact us when they have a new program they want to install that won’t run on the computers they are currently using. This means that if they want to run the new program, all computers need to be upgraded or usually replaced.
• Warranties. As a machine gets older, it is often more difficult to find replacement parts for some components. By being covered by a manufacturer’s warranty, we can typically receive all necessary parts next business day, free of charge.
• Budgets. When you drive a computer until the wheels fall off, it is difficult to predict what the expenses will be. Computers often die a slow death, requiring on-site visits to replace failed components and employee downtime. If a company decides to replace all computers every three or four years, it is easy to plan in advance, before yearly budgets are created, which machines will need to be replaced during that year.

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