I'm not exactly used to writing about Cisco Systems; its primary world of switches, routers, and other enterprise-class network products is usually more up the alley of my brethren over at Networking Pipeline. But Cisco had an announcement this week that puts it squarely into the server space, extends its horizons well beyond the networking products that glue the Internet and so many corporate installations together, and envisions a different way to provision and manage servers. You can check out more about what this means with the weekly Server Pipeline newsletter.

It was strangely chilly last night as I strolled through the park. I was grateful I had grabbed my jacket as I pulled the collar up and shoved my hands into my pockets. Thoughts of a warm cup of Starbucks Coffee flooded my mind as I passed by the section of the park where alot of homeless hunker down for the night. Most of them were sleeping, or staring off vacantly. As I passed by one particular fellow however, he called up to me in a surprisingly refined British Accent, "Pardon me sir, but would be you be so kind as to spare a few coins?"

I fumbled through my pocket, fishing out a dollar and some change. As I extended my hand I looked into the face of the poor devil before me, and my jaw dropped.

"My god...Jeeves? Is that really you?"

Yes, it was none other the familiar valet who greeted web searchers when they arrived at the doorstep of AskJeeves.com. Jeeves' clothes were tattered, his face unshaved. He looked a wreck.

"Indeed," Jeeves replied, trying to muster what dignity he could, "It seems my services were no longer required."

As I sat down on the bench next to the fallen icon, he began to relay his tale. A few days earlier, he had been busy taking care of an inquiry on the site when a call came in. Seems Ask owner Barry Diller made a surprising announcement at an investor conference. "He informed everyone that research results found that internet users were having trouble identifying with me," Jeeves explained, "Apparently, they were confused over what I represented."

"What the hell are you talking about?" I said incredulously, "What's there not to understand. You go to the site. You ask a question. You get an answer. Done."

"Ah yes, but as you may be aware, the technology behind the site has changed vastly. Users are no longer limited to asking questions. Our search engine could accommodate many more types of inquiries."

"Okay, so?"

"So it appears that my presence no longer fits into the company, and actually hampers people's understanding of what we do."

"You're serious? You're a (expletive) cartoon character!" I yelled, "I don't know ANYONE who has ever gone to your site and gotten confused. Again, you go the site. You put in a question. Or a keyword. Or a shoe size. Whatever. You get the answer you move on."

"I daresay, my enthusiastic friend, that I share your sentiment. But apparently not all web users are as savvy as you?"

Jeeves went on to say that there was no actual timeframe from when he would disappear from the site, but as I could see, he was already beginning to feel the effects.

"I couldn't afford the luxury apartment any more," Jeeves cried, "The company car is gone. They took my 24 karat feather duster too. I'm a shell of what I once was."

The time grew late and I had to head home. As I shook his grimy hand, passing two twenty dollar bills to him in the process, I thought about the idiocy of some people on the web. A cartoon butler left them confused when they tried to do a web search? What else causes these mental midgets to overload? Do they feel compelled to yodel when the go to Yahoo.com? Do they think that all the books and CDs you buy at Amazon.com come from a little tribe living in a rainforest?

Perhaps there would be hope for Jeeves. He mentioned he had an audition to play the Alfred's long lost brother in the new Batman cartoon.

Hey, the Pets.com sock puppet got a second chance. Why not Jeeves?

Alright, enough ramblin'.

Every once in a while something weird happens and you remember that you can't stand some particular feature in a piece of software that you otherwise don't mind using.

Like the domain joining functionality of Windows.

I booted up a machine yesterday only to find for some odd reason it couldn't authenticate to our domain. Network connectivity to the AD server was just fine, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why this server couldn't auth to AD.

What I needed to do was simply "rejoin" the domain. I realize that there's very few times when this is necessary, but when you have to do it, it's a PITA, because Microsoft doesn't support such functionality. You have to join a WORKGROUP, reboot, then join a DOMAIN, then reboot again in order to simulate a "rejoin" to a domain.

Needless to say this is what I ended up doing and after the second reboot the server was able to auth to the AD server and all was well, but damn... Why'd it have to be so hard?

There's no mechanism for deleting a domain on a server, and that's got to be painful for companies going through mergers or acquisitions where server consolidation may be occuring that requires a set of machines to be reconfiguring to authenticate to a new domain yet not disturb the applications running on the machine by wipe and replace, which is another solution to this problem.

It's just frustrating, even though it doesn't happen all that often. When it does, you waste half an hour just rebooting machines.

Would it really be all that difficult to add "rejoin domain" functionality? Or "delete domain membership" functionality?

Today we have just one Friday Freebie, but it's a good one.

CLAM AV is a GPL'd anti-virus package available on a plethora of operating systems - Linux (SuSE, Fedora Core, Slackware, etc..), Debian, FreeBSD, MacOS, Windows, and even BeOS.

CLAM AV offers the following features:

• command-line scanner
• fast, multi-threaded daemon
• milter interface for sendmail
• database updater with support for digital signatures
• virus scanner C library
• on-access scanning (Linux® and FreeBSD)
• detection of over 40000 viruses, worms and rojans
• built-in support for RAR (2.0), Zip, Gzip, Bzip2, Tar,MS OLE2, MS Cabinet files, MS CHM (Compressed HTML), MS SZDD
• built-in support for mbox, Maildir and raw mail files
• built-in support for Portable Executable files compressed with UPX, FSG, and Petite

Forum is using CLAM AV as the default AV scanner for XML documents, and though I haven't tested CLAM on its own merits, I've been testing Forum Systems' latest XWall release in the lab and as part of that testing I've been pounding on its AV capabilities, which necessarily means that CLAM is being peripherally tested. Thus far, CLAM AV has stopped the viruses it should in the XML documents and attachments I've tried to send through the device, and hasn't impeded performance overly much.

Check it out. It offers automated update capabilities and the database appears to be updated daily. You'll never again get those "subscription expired" notices with this AV scanner, guaranteed.

SBC forked out at least $16.3 million for behind-the-scenes lobbying in state houses between 2003 and 2004, and another $10.1 million directly to state and local candidates from 1999 to 2004, says a recent report. SBC's goal, just like the rest of Big Telecom who are big spenders on pols: Take money out of your pockets.

Boy, let an unplanned series come to an end and things just go haywire. After a most interesting September we're back with another Security Channel podcast, this time on disaster preparations and business continuity. It seems to me that the most significant (and, by far, the most common) failure in responding to disasters is the basic failure of imagination; we just can't allow ourselves to imagine that the very worst could happen to our businesses and our families. This in spite of ample evidence that the very worst can, and will, happen to at least some of us in any given year. It's tough to think about, and can seem a true pain to actually plan for, but making preparations for the worst-case scenario can be a literal life-saver when that most horrible of times does come. You can listen to the podcast here. After you do, let me know what your worst-case preparations are like; if I can get enough, we'll do a series of podcasts on what responsible companies and individuals are doing to make sure that their lives and work continue when things get bad.

If you you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, look over to the left, you'll find the link to subscribe to the Security Channel podcast. In addition, I'd like to ask a favor. Take a minute to drop me a note at cfranklin@cmp.com, and let me know what you'd like to hear in future podcasts. A podcast can be short or long, serious or amusing, hands-on or quite strategic. Let me know what you'd like to listen to, and we'll do our best to make it happen.

With most of the history still ahead for Voice over IP, it's not too soon to call eBay's purchase of Skype a watershed moment for the technology. In Internet terms, eBay/Skype is the new Netscape, a moment when someone in the public marketplace shoved a big pile of chips across the table to bet on a new and different way of doing things.

The know-nothings who run the FCC are at it again: This time they've fumbled new rules extending a federal wiretapping law to VoIP.

Stage 1: Denial
They don't really mean that I have to change my password. It's just a suggestion, really, more of a guideline than a hard and fast rule. Really, that warning will go away if I ignore it.

Stage 2: Anger
I will NOT change my password. I can't believe that the security of the entire company depends on me changing my password at this time. It's just a silly policy that IT uses to exercise digital control over the rest of the world.

Stage 3: Fear
But if I change my password I might forget it! I like my password the way it is - right now. I probably won't be able to remember what I changed it to and then I'll have to ::shudder:: call the help desk. Oh god, why is this happening to me?

Stage 4: Acceptance
Okay, I'll change my password but I won't like it. I guess maybe it really is important. After all, someone used Mary's password to hack into the corporate database yesterday and now we're under investigation by like every agency with a three letter acronym. I'll do it, but I hope they don't think I'm happy about it.

Stage 5: Wonder
Hey, that wasn't so bad. I remembered what my password is and when I told Bob and Jim and the counter guy at Starback's about the phrase technique I use to remember it they thought I was pretty cool. I'm sure the guy at Starbuck's was writing down my method so he could use it himself.

Stage 6: Joy
Wow, this new password is great! I wish I'd thought of it before. In fact, I've changed all my passwords to match the one I use at work! Gmail, Hotmail, PayPal, eBay... everything! It's such a great password! I love it! Maybe I'll name my first born after it!

Two weeks later ...

Stage 1: Denial
I can't believe I changed my password and told the counter guy at Starbuck's about it. I can't believe he used it to buy a giant cheetoh on eBay with my PayPal account and spammed everyone at corporate HQ from my Hotmail accout. At least he didn't...oh my, why are those men in suits with dark glasses coming my way? They aren't, they're just ... out for a stroll. I'm sure of it. Turn around and face the screen and whistle, they'll just pass me by, I just know it!

...

Okay, so over a year ago Lori and I did a huge set of articles on the state of Linux.

After that we set up the "Linux A-List", where you and I could recommend high-quality Linux-based applications to other users.

Then I promptly forgot about it. So now I'm working on getting it running again, getting ideas put together so that we are all sharing our favorite tools and utilities, hopefully giving each of us a more enjoyable experience.

So if you use Linux and have a favorite program to recommend (Open Source or Commercial, we don't care), head here and let the rest of us Penguin Heads know: Linux A-List

Seriously, spread the word about what works best for you, it only takes a few seconds, and it costs you nothing. I'll be updating things over the next week or two, after I solicit input from other Penguin-heads I know.

One important enabler for the WLAN industry has been the embedded WLAN capability for notebook computers, which is now included in most of the units sold. Intel's Centrino effort has both provided marketing dollars and made it easy for notebook computer vendors to include WLAN capability. Can the same success be replicated with wireless wide-area networks, whether they are based on EDGE, EV-DO, UMTS/HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) or, eventually, WiMAX? Will such developments also accelerate the adoption of wireless data? And what are the issues involved in making embedded wireless WAN a reality? These questions were addressed in a September 13, 2005, symposium by the Portable Computer and Communications Association, an organization that works on wireless data interoperability issues and of which I act as chair.

There are a number of reasons for wanting wireless WAN embedded. One is ease of use, since the card comes preconfigured for use and doesn't require an installation procedure. Another is improved performance. If the notebook computer is properly designed for the wireless WAN card, it will include internal antennas high in the lid of the notebook computer. It may even include multiple antennas to accommodate forthcoming performance-increasing techniques such as mobile receive diversity and MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output). The notebook computer will also provide the proper thermal, electrical and electromagnetic environments to ensure optimum operation of the radio circuits.

Right before our very eyes, the world is changing, and the way we do business is evolving right along with it. As we individuals, we are cutting our ties to conventional wired networks, and increasingly relying on their wireless counterparts. And business is following suit, with the adoption of more sophisticated devices that take advantage of the flexibility mobility allows.

Would you put up with behind-the-scenes operators trying to ban your city from fixing your town's streets, claiming that only well-connected private businesses should be allowed to do it? Of course not. And in the same way, we shouldn't put up with Big Telecom trying to ban cities and towns from launching their own WiFi networks.

A whole bunch of companies in the server market think the time is right to bring Intel's Itanium processor platform into its next stages. My colleagues at CRN have the basic news today, and check back Tuesday for my deeper look at what the new Itanium Solutions Alliance aims to do.

So I've been chatting it up with several people going through the buying process for storage, and one thing has become abundantly clear: There is no "right price" for storage any more.

Small, agile companies have eaten the bottom out of this market. It does not matter if you prefer NAS over SAN, iSCSI to FC, FC over SATA or SAS over both.

Price out a terabyte. Start with a company you don't know, try a search on Newegg.com for example, and then price all the way through to a tier one SAN.

You'll find a factor of 100 in pricing.

100. Think about that. How much service and support has to be present before that multiplier is worth it? Centralized management is nice, expandability is nice, but really, a factor of 100 is pretty extreme.

It has me wondering what the comparative margins are between these companies. I think I know. I'm guessing a factor of around 100.

I suggest, just off-the-cuff, that you think hard about how and why you spend your dollars, they're a replacable resource, but pay raises go a lot farther toward productivity than brand names and slight speed improvements do.

For the second time in two months the rumormill brings me word of some rather naughty vendors spreading lies. I won't name names, you know who you are, so knock it off.

Look, if you decided not to participate in a review, that's fine. It's your loss and a bad idea, but hey - it's your company, not mine. But when your customers or potential customers ask you why you didn't participate, you don't lie and tell them "it cost too much to get into the review" or dismiss the results of 3 months of our lives by saying "so and so must have paid to get that result".

Network Computing has never been paid for conducting its reviews. We conduct reviews for our readers and we don't take payment for placement. If you want that kind of coverage, you know what magazines and analyst firms you need to go to. It ain't us.

If a product won a review, it's because in our scenario it scored the best out of all products tested. And we test them hard. We beat them, kick them and make them do things you didn't think we'd try. I'm a developer by trade so I can probably make your application do things you hadn't even considered yet - and that means I'm likely to break it along the way, just like your customers - our readers - might do.

If you think someone could pay us to say good things about a bad product, then you're confusing us with test labs and analyst firms that shall remain nameless. Take a look at some of our reviews. We aren't all sunshine and happiness, especially when a product performs poorly. We tell the truth about our experiences, plain and simple.

So please stop. We don't spend months of our lives in the lab testing products to have it casually dimissed by vendors who were afraid to let us play with your toys.

You made your koolaid, now drink it.

Now that eBay is buying out Skype for up to $4.1 billion, the rumor mill says that Vonage may be next in line for as much as a $1.5 billion buyout from a potential suitor. But buyer beware: The VoIP bubble will ultimately burst, and neither company is worth the cost.

Maybe I just have a twisted, warped sense of humor, but a number of things struck me as funny while in San Francisco for Oracle OpenWorld earlier this week.

The strangest thing I heard
Tuesday, 10am. Stockton Street.

"And that's why I won't do crack."

The strangest thing I saw
Wednesday, 10am. San Francisco International Airport.

Dude is well over 6 feet tall, wearing the quintessential cowboy getup; a big black hat, white shirt, black vest, banjo in its case strapped across his back and .... a fanny pack.

The strangest FUD I heard
Tuesday, 5pm. Moscone Center

"Solaris 10 is free and it doesn't have the licensing issues that other products are having, because we own the kernel."

At first I was appalled to hear this coming out of a Sun representative, even one whose primary purpose was to entertain conference attendees. But it makes sense. The only vendor making money on selling operating systems these days is Microsoft, and we're betting its days are numbered there also. RedHat makes money off services and support, not the OS, and Sun, having given up and made Solaris 10 free for all comers, has to give users a reason to want to use Solaris over Linux. The best reason it could come up with is SCO's lame licensing claims??

Come on, guys. Give it a rest. You want me to use Solaris 10, fine, tout containers and some of the other nifty neato keen features in the OS. Don't give me FUD - I had some for breakfast, thank you.

The strangest drink I had
Tuesday, 6pm. Buca di Beppo on Howard Street.

Limoncello. A must have according to BEA VP Bill Roth.

I had to do some research on this one after trying this drink at dinner with BEA, because I was absolutely certain after one sip that this was actually Everclear. You know, Everclear - you get it in Tennessee/Kentucky from a guy in overalls and barefeet who barely speaks English but damn does he know how to make alcohol. (Yes, that's experience speaking) Apparently they take a grain alcohol and soak it in lemon peels for 3 weeks, which means that this shot is supposedly just as strong with lemon as it is with alcohol.

Believe me, the alcohol is stronger. Trust me on this. The food was great though, so try it if you get a chance.

To make up for last week's single freebie, we have three freebies for you this week. Enjoy!

Opera
Yes, this one has always technically been free, but in the past that "other" browser has been free at the cost of ad space. No more. Opera is now offered completely free of charge with no ads in your face. If you haven't tried Opera before, check it out - it's been steadily improving over the years and its CSS and HTML support are on track with the standards, something that can't be said about some other browsers out there.

Cashette
Cashette is the priceline.com of SPAM and free e-mail. Users get a free e-mail account - with 3000 MB of storage - and they get to name their price for receiving ... SPAM. That's right - spammers are allowed to send their mail to users at this site, IF they are willing to pay the price set by the users.

Cashette accounts are free and include a full-featured email account with 3 GB of storage space. The Cashette spam-control service works for Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, Cashette, POP3, and many other types of email accounts.

Skaffe.com
And finally, we have yet another free blog hosting service, this one from skaffe.com. The Skaffe Weblog Hosting script features 26 easy-to-use templates, or customized templates for unique looks. New blog entries are easily accomplished using a Windows-style, feature-packed entry system. A category option helps keep blogs neat and organized. Comments on blogs are easily controlled through user administration panels. Popular RSS feeds are available for all blogs. The script can also send pings to popular blog indexing services.

Enjoy your Friday Freebies, folks!

A screenshot of the Google Print program, in which the search giant will scan copyrighted books without publisher and author permission, shows that the search giant is using not-so-subtle tactics to try and force publishers to agree to participate.

I see a lot of products in a year. I mean a lot. It's kind of my job to get toys, play with them, try to break them, then tell you how well they did. Sometimes they break too easy, but you get the idea.

Anyway, since I see so much, it is not often that I get a product and go "this is friggin' cool" about twelve times when opening the package.

That's what happened though when QLogic sent me the SAN Express promo pack - an example of SAN Express at work.

It's small, and it's a SAN. In short, "it's friggin' cool".

Put together by QLogic, Seagate, Studio Network Solutions, the package I received for our Green Bay lab is 280 Gigabytes of FC storage that fits in a 2x2x1 box that has plenty of padding.

So of course I want to put this thing together - there was no mention in the box about how much storage was in it, and no matter what they tell you, size does matter to Storage people ;-).

I take an old server we had lying around, a white box that CMP bought for us several years ago, and install a crispy clean copy of Windows on it. Of course, I haven't used one of these servers in a while, so I forgot that nothing works on it without the driver disk. So I had to dig out a rarely used driver disk and get everything working. That took longer than you'd expect.

So once Windows was running correctly, I shut it down and pulled the server out to put the FC card in. I haven't used these servers for hardware, I was doing only software testing at the time they were in popular use. So I was surprised to find that, in a 1U server, all the expansion slots were straight up and down.

Swearing, I went looking for the expansion lift to turn the cards sideways. Finally, I gave up in frutstration and dug out a newer tower machine.

Ripping the tower machine apart first, I slipped the card in and started the install. Thankfully, all went well, and a short three days after starting to play with this rig, I was able to hit the disks.

The actual SAN gear installed like a dream. All of my problems were from trying to use an old machine.

I'm still playing with it, this isn't in the labs for review, but thus far, I'm impressed with the product. My only concern is the concern that I have with all FC products - how many can they really sell at the price? Disk is cheap these days, and thousands of dollars for a 280 Gig drive, no matter how fast it is, might be too much.

It's a shame too, because as I've said throughout this article, "This thing is friggin' cool".

If all goes as planned, Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron will testify before a Senate panel Thursday about communication companies' responses to Hurricane Katrina, showing that Congress isn't mimicing the deaf ear shown to advanced IP services lately by the FCC.

As many of us expected, Google has been sued for digitizing library books without seeking permission from copyright holders. The Authors Guild and three writers sued the search-engine giant in a New York federal court, claiming Google's actions amounted to a "massive copyright infringement."

Google is flat-out wrong in its official response to the copyright infringement suit against it by three authors and the Author's Guild.

Talking on a mobile handset. For a concept that seems so familiar and commonplace, the underlying infrastructure--and associated complexity-- required to support VoWLANs (voice over wireless LANs) has been somewhat intimidating. Helping to tackle all the related issues and bring some clarity to the marketplace are standards bodies such as the Wi-Fi Alliance and the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). This week, we'll look at what the Wi-Fi Alliance is doing.

Formerly WECA, the Wi-Fi Alliance was formed in 1999 to provide a basic interoperability testing ground for the new IEEE 802.11 equipment flooding the market. Initial standards focused on 802.11b, then on 802.11g and 802.11a, with testing along the way for WEP (wired equivalent privacy) support. In 2002, the alliance developed WPA (Wi-Fi protected access) as an interim but compatible solution for the still developing IEEE 802.11i security standard. Since that time, the Wi-Fi Alliance has become more expansive in its scope.

Google is being sued for "massive copyright infringement" by the Authors Guild and three authors -- and the authors should win the suit. Google is plain wrong for its unauthorized scanning and copying countless books without permission.

BOSTON -- Being a ham radio operator, VoIP entrepreneur Jeff Pulver is the perfect person to merge disaster recovery ideas between the amateur radio enthusiasts and the IP communications industry. His latest idea? A joint "field day" for radio and Internet geeks to test their emergency-preparedness skills.

I'm a big Firefox fan, but Symantec's newest Internet Security Threat Report, which warns that Firefox has nearly double the security vulnerabilities as Internet Explorer, should give network managers pause before they install it enterprise-wide.

Wanted to go to Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco this week but couldn't? Want to see whether or not you were missing something?

Oracle has 4 different web cams set up on the floor for your virtual viewing pleasure.

I'm the one with the triple cappuccino and the crazed look on my face. Really.

Web cam #1
Web cam #2
Web cam #3
Web cam #4

A few weeks ago, a report from Gartner dinged Sun Microsystems for its revenue drop in the midst of a strong server market; Gartner pointed particularly to the lack of breadth in Sun's product line as the culprit. Turns out Sun was already on the case, though.

Google's project to scan and make the full text of millions of books on the Internet searchable is a noble idea --- but the way Google is going about it is arrogant and wrong-headed.

At first, Google went to publishers, and asked them which copyrighted books the publishers wanted to make available this way. That's fine. But when Google wasn't happy because the publishers weren't submitting enough books for Google's hungry maw, it did an end-around, and is now going directly to libraries, and scanning the copyrighted books without the publishers' permission.

That's flat-out wrong. It's digital piracy, and not much different than the file-sharers who download copyrighted music, books, and movies without paying for them. Maybe it's worse --- Google will make money off the venture, while the file-sharers don't.

The issue will most likely end up in the courts. But here's hoping that Google comes to its senses, and only makes available books that the publishers want to be available.

The Microsoft bigwig teamed up with Napoleon Dynamite in this spoof video from PDC 2005. The camera's a little shaky, but you get the idea.

So I knew Oracle wasn't going to "kill" Sieble On Demand as salesforce.com's Marc Benioff remarked to his organization, but it's always nice to have a bit of confirmation.

Bruce Cleveland, Senior VP of Products at Siebel, sent out a rather interesting note yesterday regarding the comments Marc sent out on Monday. In it, among other things, was a quote from Oracle head honcho Larry Ellison, taken during a press conference regarding the acquisition.

"Regarding Marc’s remarks that Oracle will “kill� Siebel CRM OnDemand... Here is what I heard Larry Ellison say word-for-word,

“We think OnDemand is going to be increasingly important. We think the Siebel OnDemand products have -- are improving at a very, very rapid rate and we intend to invest in them heavily. In fact, we expect that all of the Siebel product features and functions that they have in the software products will migrate to the OnDemand products. So we think that is again a very important asset that we want to preserve and invest in as the acquisition is concluded."

Well. There it is then. Now if I could just predict the winning lottery numbers...

Today's Friday Freebie comes from McGrath Info Solution (M.I.S.).

For some background, MIS announced a file standard (MIS) to make it easy for consumers to have information about their multimedia files and for other types of files/information. The specification supports more than 187 tags including notes, multiple chapters, slideshows, subtexts, questions, and website links.

The freebie for today (you knew it was in here somewhere) is "IMDB 2 MIS" (available in English). It takes the free files from the Internet Movie Database (IMDB.COM), allowing the user to create ".MIS" files. By simply pointing to the users folders of recorded movies, the application will search the generated database and build a ".MIS".

It's a helpful organizational tool, and the .MIS files can be easily edited/read with a simple text editor, so if you're a code monkey you can integrate the data into your own system or whatever else your coding heart desires.

For the second time in two months, ICANN has delayed approving the .xxx porn domain. Clearly, the puritans and powerful conservative special interest groups are in the ascendance.

Where: my inbox
Time: 8am
Reaction: ROTFLMAO

Message begins: "iSearchNaked.Com Wipes Out Click Fraud and Pay Per Click!"

Do I really need to say anything else? Really? Why would you...and then tell people about it...I just...and then...

'nuff said.

You know what drives me nuts? I'm sitting there, watching "Lost," waiting for them to tell me what the heck's at the bottom of that hatch, and the next thing I know, I'm watching a commercial where the announcer informs me I can now purchase Product XYZ in four "great" versions. There's the original formula, the fume-free formula, the fast-acting formula, the one that comes in the limited edition Will Ferrell "Elf" shaped bottle formula.

Is it really so hard for these companies to manufacturer a version of Product XYZ that works just like the original, but does all those other things too (except maybe the Will Ferrell shaped bottle)? Of course not. But if the makers of these fine products threw all those formulas into one can, that would mean fewer product options on the shelves to entice us (read: sucker us with). After all, maybe you were a fan of the original version, but the smell of pinecones and dog hair was just a little too aromatic. So you try the fume-free version, only to discover it just doesn't work quite as quickly as the odiferous one. Shucks!

As far as many readers of the Advanced IP Pipeline are concerned, if someone wants to start a volunteer "Geek Corps" to assist with the technical recovery needs of Katrina-like disasters, they're ready and willing to serve.

As is the case with most information technologies, performance thresholds have played an important role in driving the wireless network market. It wasn't that long ago that breaking the one-megabit performance barrier was viewed as a significant technical event. And when 802.11b surpassed the 10-megabit data rate provided by Ethernet, wireless LANs gained significant market credibility (even though actual throughput was much lower than Ethernet). The latest barrier to be broken by the wireless engineering team at Airgo Networks is 100-megabit Fast Ethernet, the industry standard network technology connecting most desktop computers to home and enterprise networks.

Yes, we've seen a number of vendors offer wireless networking that purportedly runs at speeds in excess of 100 megabits. But the throughput of these systems is less than half that number, making it significantly slower than Fast Ethernet in real-world environments. Plus, the added performance sometimes comes at the expense of compatibility with standards-based 802.11. Still, pushing the performance window is good business, and it has been proven to move boxes through the retail channel.

Don't confuse previous high-performance wireless technology with that offered by Airgo. The upstart wireless chip developer is breaking new ground with radio-based networking that defies conventional wireless wisdom and sets the stage for future improvements in performance of all wireless systems, from the home to the enterprise to the metropolis. Airgo's latest True MIMO Gen3 product offering, sampling in volume today and expected to find its way into shipping products by year-end, touts a maximum data rate of 240 megabits per second and sustainable TCP throughput in excess of 120 Mbps. That's twice as fast as the company's second-generation chip and faster, using real- world applications, than Fast Ethernet. If that's not enough, how does 15% cheaper and 20% more power efficient. It's the hottest wireless technology currently available and it foretells a very interesting future.

It's easy to point the finger of blame at the criminally incompetent boobs who run FEMA, the disaster of a federal disaster agency. But when a crisis strikes your network, the odds are that you'll be as unprepared as they were.

That's the finding of a study by AT&T, which found that as a general rule, enterprise networks don't have disaster, backup, and contingency plans.

The study revealed that almost one third of U.S. businesses don't have continuity plans, and almost 40% said it wasn't priority. More than 40% don't have off-site back-up or redundant servers. And amazingly enough, almost a third don't have even basic network security measures.

If Katrina doesn't convince network managers it's time to get their plans in order, nothing will. I wouldn't want to be in the network manager's shoes who doesn't adequately prepare for disaster -- it'll lead to a quick and ugly exit.

Looks like my genius with a post-hole digger spent the weekend in LA?

I thought it was bad that one idiot could take out a neighborhood, but now we see a team of idiots can take out a city.

Make sure you've got your backups in order and your UPS tested, that's all I can say.

Yahoo's decision to send a war correspondent to cover every armed conflict in the world within a year is little more than a stunt. It's a slightly tasteless way to let people vicariously engage in war tourism.

True, the award-winning correspondent, Kevin Sites, is well-respected, courageous, and has covered wars in many continents for many outlets including CNN, NBC, ABC and MSNBC.

The problem isn't Sites, but his assignment. Covering every conflict in the world in a year means that he won't be able to cover any in-depth. We already get plenty of superficial war reporting --- what's needed is in-depth coverage. But given that his schedule requires him to cover every conflict worldwide in a year, the surface is all we'll see.

Sites will let Internet viewers vicariously participate in war tourism -- see all the dead bodies and brutality, but from a safe distance back at home.

If this is Tuesday, we must be in Sudan. Or is that Iraq? Maybe Afghanistan?

Larry strikes again. Oracle today acquired Siebel for $5.85b, ending the CRM pioneer's (and many customers') pain.

The acquisition is somewhat of a family reunion, bringing back Larry Ellison's protege Tom Siebel back to the fold. Siebel left Oracle 16 years ago after Larry dismissed Siebel's idea for software to manage business contacts a Bad Idea. Today's acquisition fills the CRM hole in Oracle's portfolio with software that has steadily become synonymous with Salesforce.com.

Salesforce.com CEO and Chairman Marc Benioff said in comments to his organization:

Oracle put Siebel investors out of their misery today. We have been doing that for Siebel customers for years.

He's got a sense of humor, I like that. This is a great quote. Whoever is writing this stuff deserves a raise!

Our announcement today at Dreamforce will accelerate that. It's the end of software.

Really, Marc, be serious. After all, salesforce.com is still just software, it's merely sold in a different way.

Client/Server software is being consolidated by Oracle just as mainframe software was consolidated by Computer Associates. Oracle's strategy is simple. Instead of innovating, buy as much installed software as possible, call it all Oracle Fusion, and make sure it all uses Oracle's database.

Interesting that you don't mention Microsoft here, Marc, since it has a similar strategy. While I agree that it isn't likely that MS CRM will be a big player in this space, they do have a product and the Microsoft name alone carries enough weight that perhaps you ought not forget they exist.

Now, the same thing that happened to Peoplesoft will happen to Siebel, it will die.

Well, I'd say Peoplesoft was killed. Saying 'it will die' makes it sound like it will just fade away like a cowboy into the sunset. Peoplesoft was systematically and coldly killed by a masked executioner carrying a big axe, and the executioner looked suspiciously like Larry Ellison.

Customers will look for new solutions and new providers. Employees will look for new employers. Siebel on Demand, a joint venture between Siebel and IBM, will be the first to be buried. Siebel on Demand is written exclusively on DB2 and Websphere and runs in IBM data centers. Oracle will kill it. Oracle does not sell DB2.

Wait a minute, Marc. Now I think you're superimposing dreams over reality. Oracle's unlikely to kill Siebel on Demand, unless Larry's been smoking something he shouldn't. The on-demand CRM market is the market that's experiencing growth, not traditional CRM software, so why would Oracle kill it? Oh, there's that little DB2 issue, but because it is on demand, Oracle can take its time to re-architect the back-end of the software and migrate to Oracle 10g without ever bothering a single customer. It's an unbelievable opportunity to showcase the scalability and power of Oracle 10g and increase the market share numbers for the platform all without having to sell to the customer, because they have no control whatsoever over what Oracle does inside the data center.

What It All Means

Salesforce.com would just love for some of its only on demand competition to just disappear, because it could eat up that market like a cat laps up milk. But Larry would have to be pretty silly to kill something he can use to not only market right now but also to increase the use of Oracle 10g, his undisputed favorite among all Oracle product lines.

So yes, this is big news, but it doesn't necessarily indicate the death knell of all competition for Salesforce.com. Oracle has the ability to execute and often lulls competitors into a sense of complacency that will bite them in the ass later if they aren't watching carefully.

So watch out behind you, Salesforce.com, this race isn't over just yet.

eBay made a bad bet in buying VoIP company Skype for an astonishing $2.6 billion -- and maybe as much as $4.1 billion, depending on whether performance goals can be hit.

Not bad for a company that gives away its software.

Sure, the free Skype software is very nice. But it's not up to $41. billion nice, especially considering that the competition for consumer-level VoIP is brutal. Vonage, telecom companies, cable companies...they're all chasing the same dollars.

If I owned eBay stock, I'd be selling today. They made a bid on an auction and got suckered.

The call made by President Bush to the mayor of New Orleans was made via a Vonage Voice over IP connection, according to a great story in today's Wall Street Journal that recaps the communications struggles of the city's leaders during Hurricane Katrina's darkest hours.

Sun will be rolling out some ambitious plans to extend its server lines on Monday at its Network Computing event.

It's September, so everyone's children (including mine) are going back to school. In our area, the "must have supply" lists are distributed to local retailers to make certain parents have no money left in their pocket books when they leave the store.

One of the items on our twelve year old daughter's list was floppy disks. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find floppy disks these days? The schools take protection seriously, so the kids aren't supposed to take the disks home and use them for fear of infecting the entire school network with viruses and other nasties and that's just as well because quite frankly, I'm not sure that there is a machine in my house that still sports a 3.5" drive. The children's laptops don't have them, our laptops don't have them and I'm not certain I relish the thought of the kids using the servers that are old enough to have such a drive to copy homework.

Once, long ago (I won't say how long because quite frankly you don't need to know) schools outpaced the home in terms of available technology. I had an Apple ][e at home and that, for the time, was an astounding thing, because most families didn't even know what a computer was at that point. Schools with half a dozen Apple subsidized computers were far ahead of the curve in those days.

Today, however, the technology at home is outpacing the technology in the schools and each year it seems the schools get further and further behind. Our kids use USB fobs to keep electronic journals and transfer files between them and stare disbelievingly at the clunky, 3.5" disks the school requires of them. It's sort of like showing them an LP and having them ask "Is that like a really big CD?"

Schools should be ahead of the curve, but they aren't anymore. The kids today know more about technology than most of the teachers in their middle and high schools and at some point there needs to be established as one of the core education requirements a technology track. The three "Rs" need to be expanded to the three "Rs" and a "T" for technology and that technology needs to at least keep pace if not outstrip the technology available in the home.

We need more educators that are technically minded, and the people in charge of the technology in schools need to be techs, not educators who happen to know where the power button is on a server. We seriously need to reevaluate the immersion of technology as a learning tool as well as a fact of life within our schools and move them into the 21st century.

And running some Linux desktops wouldn't hurt, either. ;-)

Today's Friday Freebie is, perhaps ironically, blog related.

Online blog aggregator bloggator.com has come out of its beta period and added new blogs and new categories to its growing community.

Bloggator offers access to over 15,000 blogs, organized into categories covering a broad range of interests. A personal blog is also provided with each free account, so if you're interested in blogging, here's YAB (Yet Another Blog) site for you that's free (as in gratis).

eBay's reported buyout offer for Skype for up to $3 billion shows that VoIP may prove to be as big a bubble as the Internet had been. In fact, Skype will be the poster child for the bubble, just as the Pets.com sock puppet was a symbol of Internet stock excesses.

Is the VoIP startup really worth up to $3 billion, when there are already larger competitors like Vonage out there, and when major telecom companies are all preparing their own VoIP offerings?

Of course not. Skype would do well to sell out now, while they can get a massively inflated price for the company. For them, it's time to party like it's 1999. Their buye