It’s hard to believe that some of the most profitable software companies in the world–Oracle, Microsoft and SAP–are sitting on a licensing model that is untenable in the long run and will increasingly irk customers. But there may be a revolution in the cards that could tip the balance of power, argues Gartner.

In a presentation, Gartner analyst William Snyder makes the case that software profit margins will erode. These software giants will fall to the same pricing pressures their hardware cousins. Snyder spoke at the at the Gartner Emerging Technologies Conference this week.

Hey it is about time that some of the companies start to pay attention to what the customers want and release some of the drivers/codecs/ whatever and allow everyone to play on level field, Baldy

Read the rest of the article

Watching the evolution of open source tools for video editing and manipulation over the last 10 years has been less than a thrilling experience. But are things about to change for the better in the near future? Can even the people most disenchanted with the current state of affairs feel tempted to regain a spark of hope?
The problem

The everyday user of GNU/Linux (or any of the other Unix-derived operating systems out there) can presently watch, listen to, and even produce rudimentary media content quite comfortably, but open source has not kept up with proprietary software vendors when it comes to the development of professional and semi-professional video editing tools.

Read the Rest of the Article

Puskas writes “Joe Stewart is the director of malware research at SecureWorks, and presented a dire view of the current botnet landscape at the RSA conference this week. He conducted a survey of the top spamming ‘nets, extrapolating their size from the volume of emails that flow across the internet. By his calculations, the top 11 networks control just over a million machines, hitting inboxes with some 100 billion messages a day. ‘The botnet at the top of the chart is Srizbi. According to Stewart, this botnet — which also goes by the names “Cbeplay” and “Exchanger” — has an estimated 315,000 bots and can blast out 60 billion messages a day. While it may not have gotten the publicity that Storm has during the last year, it’s built around a much more substantial collection of hijacked computers, said Stewart. In comparison, Storm’s botnet counts just 85,000 machines, only 35,000 of which are set up to send spam. Storm, in fact, is No. 5 on Stewart’s list.’”

Not that I will say I told you so, but hey some folks just have no clue when it comes to security, Baldy

Read the Original Article

SAO PAOLO, Brazil–At a Las Vegas conference on Thursday, Gartner analysts warned that Windows is in danger of collapsing, according to a report in ComputerWorld.

Upon reading that, I wondered how this could have happened in the 10 days I have been traveling around Latin America. Although Microsoft faces challenges from Linux and piracy here, looking out from the company’s futuristic offices, it hardly seemed like either the building or the Windows empire was in imminent danger of collapse.

Seriously, though, Gartner analyst Michael Silver appears to be noting some important long-term issues that threaten to make it harder for Microsoft to maintain its dominant position in the market. These threats are not new, but nonetheless all bear consideration. First, Microsoft has had an inordinantly difficult time upgrading its core product. Although Microsoft has said it will not go as long before its next release of Windows as it did between XP and Vista, even the possible sped-up timetable hardly shows a product that can quickly adapt to change.

Hey he said it this time folks so don’t blame me, Baldy

Read the Rest of the Article