Outdated (and vulnerable) Java usage abounds, analysis finds

Despite the widespread and well-publicised exploitation of vulnerabilities in Java, large numbers of organisations continue to use versions that are weeks, months or even years out of date, a Websense survey of its customers has reported.

Collecting data from millions of endpoints, Websense discovered an amazing degree of fragmentation of Java clients, with three quarters using a Runtime that was at least six months out of date.

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Drilling down again, two thirds were half a year out of date and half more than a year behind, a degree of vulnerability that would make such PCs easy meat for even non-targeted attacks using common Java exploits.

A quarter were more than four years out of date, as good as saying these endpoints will probably never receive a Java update.

Only one in twenty were detected to be running the latest Java version.

Plotting this against known exploits in malware toolkits, Websense found that 94 percent of endpoints were vulnerable to the most recent example, CVE-2013-1493. Three quarters were vulnerable to CVE-2012-5076 from last November.

"This means that more than 77 per cent of users (based on requests from our research) are currently using Java version that are essentially end of life and will not be updated, patched or supported by Oracle," said Websense.

If one takes Websense's figures at face value, there are actually two problems with Java.

First, a surprisingly large number of users aren't being patched at all. Second, even those who do are finding it hard to keep up with the inexorable cycle of updates.

The situation is now so bad that many security experts recommend that consumers and businesses simply ditch Java altogether, or look to do that as soon as is possible.

There seem to be no easy way out of this impasse. Oracle has been encouraged to add new security features such as application whitelisting but this wouldn't solve matters for the large population of holdouts.

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Listen for the next big thing on Twitter: #TwitterChats

Network World - Atul Jha likes to stay up-to-date on the latest and greatest in the tech world; after all, that's part of his job as a consultant and technology evangelist for CSS Corp., which is co-headquartered in Silicon Valley and India.

But living in the southeastern urban center of Chennai, India, Jha doesn't necessarily get the chance to have a lot of face-to-face meetings with users, customers, analysts and other techies. So, he makes do using alternatives, and one of his platforms of choice is Twitter.

Jha is a regular contributor to a number of Twitter Chats, which are real-time discussions, usually at a recurring day or time, focused on a particular industry or interest, according to Katie Keating, IBM's cloud social business manager. IBM has been hosting a Twitter chat about cloud computing, using the hashtag #CloudChat, since 2011; a recent Twitter Chat about OpenStack generated more than 1 million impressions, IBM says.

Twitter Chats seem to be all the rage on the microblogging site. Vendors, social media experts, regular users, customers, analysts, journalists and just about anyone can join in on the conversations, which range from a variety of topics. There are Twitter Chats on any number of subject areas, but in the technology industry, they seem to becoming more and more popular.

[ RUMORS: iPhone 6 rumor rollup of the week ending March 29 ]

"It's really interesting to see how social media has evolved over the past couple of years," says Christine Needles, senior director of global communications at CA Technologies, and one of the organizers of the company's biweekly #CloudViews Twitter chat. Just a few years ago Twitter seemed to be a niche platform, but today, Needles says it's become mainstream. "It's definitely grown up in terms of maturity," she says. "There are a lot of great thought leaders and users making some really interesting connections."

For people like Jha, Twitter and Twitter Chats are a perfect fit. Jha has connected with vendors and analysts, and uses Twitter to stay in touch with people he meets at trade shows and industry events. More specifically, Twitter Chats offer him a way of meeting and engaging with new people, hearing ideas and perspectives from industry leaders, and giving him an opportunity to share his thoughts. The real-time interactive nature of the platform makes it great for staying up-to-date on the latest and greatest in industry trends, he says, while providing users with direct access to vendors and industry influencers.

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Dell's SEC report describes challenges for PC makers

Dell described a bleak outlook for the PC industry on Good Friday in a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

The document, one of several filed by the company in connection with its move to go private, includes a laundry list of ills that pretty much defines life for computer makers in the post PC era.

That list identifies factors contributing not only to Dell's present and future performance, but paints a picture of the uncertain world ahead for all PC makers.

Dell's pitch

In its filing, Dell makes it sound like it would do present stockholders a favor by buying out their stock and taking the company off the stock market. By scooping up all Dell common shares in the market, it noted, stockholders will "no longer be exposed to the various risks and uncertainties related to continued ownership of Common Stock."

Among those uncertainties are decreasing revenues from Dell's bread and butter products—desktop and laptop PCs. The company acknowledges it has no no idea when or if this trend will end.

IDGNSMichael Dell, founder and CEO

Factors cited by Dell as contributing to present revenue declines include "uncertain adoption" of Windows 8, slowdowns of Windows 7 upgrades in the enterprise, longer PC replacement cycles, and, of course, substitution of tablets and smartphones for PCs.

Not only are Windows sales lagging, but Dell reported that alternative operating systems are gaining traction in the market, a trend hurting the company's PC offerings, which primarily run Windows.

Making matters worse, when someone finally upgrades a PC, the margins for the company on that sale won't be very high due to commoditization of pricing for PCs.

Those revenue declines might be offset by sales of smartphones and tablets but, alas, the company confesses it has "very little presence" in those markets.

In the past, Dell has been able to rake in revenues from high-margin PC products, but that market, like the rest of the PC market, is in decline. Dollars for PCs are moving to lower-margin products, Dell noted, "a segment in which the company has historically been much less competitive."

Dell is also being hurt by the "Bring Your Own Device" trend in the workplace, it said, because that trend favors products produced by the company's competitors which "have greater appeal to consumers than [Dell's] current products."

Dell's founder and CEO Michael Dell announced he wanted to take the company private in February and put a $2 billion deal on the table to do it. However, he left the door open for Dell's board of directors to receive offers from other interested parties. Earlier this week, those offers came in.

Battling buyout offers

A group affiliated with a private equity fund managed by Blackstone and another group led by Carl Icahn both submitted buyout offers to the board's committee reviewing such offers.

Blackstone's deal includes a per share offer of $14.25; Icahn's, $15 a share. CEO and Chairman Dell's offer is $13.65 a share. All the offers would provide stockholders with a tidy profit, based on $10.88 per share price at which Dell stock was selling when news broke of a proposal to take the company private.

In high finance circles, the devil in deals like this is in the details, which is why the committee noted:

"The Special Committee has not determined that either the Blackstone proposal or the Icahn proposal in fact constitutes a superior proposal under the existing merger agreement and neither is at this stage sufficiently detailed or definitive for such a determination to be appropriate. There can be no assurance that either proposal will ultimately lead to a superior proposal."

"While negotiations continue the Special Committee has not changed its recommendation with respect to, and continues to support, the company's pending sale to entities controlled by Michael Dell and Silver Lake Partners," it added.

The committee said that CEO Dell is willing to "explore in good faith the possibility of working with third parties regarding alternative acquisition proposals"—a wise move, since, if Blackstone or Icahn acquired the company, its founder could find himself without a job.

However, since there's no timetable for ironing out what to do about the deals now on the table, Dell will likely helm his company for some time to come.

Microsoft joins in

In addition to Silver Lake, Microsoft has also thrown in with Founder Dell for the tune of $2 billion. That's led to all kinds of speculation about Redmond's intentions.

It's well known that Microsoft hasn't been totally satisfied with the quality of the hardware being produced for its software. That dissatisfaction led Redmond to produce its own Windows-based Surface line of tablets.

By buying a piece of Dell, Microsoft might be buying a bigger say over what kind of hardware is produced for its software, some Microsoft watchers have speculated. It could also mean that Microsoft is contemplating an exit from the tablet business somewhere down the road.

If CEO Dell can take his company private, he believes he will have greater freedom to take it where it needs to go if it's to survive in the post-PC era. That path includes the continued production of PCs, but with a heavy focus on the enterprise market.

However, Dell's investors believe he's low-balling them with his offer, which means the company is in for some interesting times as its board tries to reconcile the interests of everyone involved.

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Microsoft aims high with the Surface's corporate ambitions

Many people think of the Surface Pro as a tablet for serious work, but according to Surface chief Panos Panay, Microsoft's slates haven't even truly gotten down to business yet.

Speaking at the company's annual CIO summit this week, Panay said that Microsoft is "right on the cusp" of bolstering the Surface lineup's business chops after admittedly targeting consumers out of the gate. Though he didn't provide many specifics, CITEWorld reports that Panay mentioned one enterprise-friendly option coming to the company's now-patented Touch and Type Covers.

"They'll be customized for organizations in the future," he said. "You'll start to see these get customized and transformed."

Panay's comments come on the heels of a new commercial ordering option for the Surface tablets, which allows businesses to buy both the Surface Pro and Surface RT, their accessories, and optional 3-year "Surface Extended Hardware Service Plans" in bulk after creating a volume licensing agreement with Microsoft.

Even if Microsoft designed the Surface series with consumers in mind, the Surface Pro tablet is chock-full of features enticing to the suit-and-tie crowd. It's the first tablet to sport a full-fledged Intel Core i5 processor, giving the tablet Ultrabook brawn in slate-like form. And unlike the Surface RT, the Surface Pro's Core processor gives it the full-blown capabilities of Windows 8, complete with the ability to join domains and run legacy apps, virtual machines, and VPN software alike—all crucial capabilities to corporate users.

Microsoft's website for commercial Surface tablet orders.

Beyond software, the Surface Pro already sports business-friendly hardware features such as a Mini DisplayPort, an included stylus, and the computational chops to drive a discrete 1080p display without breaking a sweat. Few tablets can make all of those claims.

Indeed, the Surface lineup already stands out as a star of the business tablet class, even if it's not selling like gangbusters. What else could Microsoft possibly pull out of its hat besides modern UI-style Office apps or business-focused software similar to what's already found in enterprise offerings from Dell, Lenovo, and others? I'm not sure, but I'm definitely intrigued.

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How to switch between Ribbon views in Office 2013

The more I use Office 2013, the more I like some of the little interface tweaks Microsoft made to the suite.

For example, in Outlook 2013, you can now view all your unread email with just one click. (That's one of five surprisingly great things about the new Outlook.)

I've also discovered a nice change to the Ribbon toolbar, which was one of the most controversial changes in Office 2007 and largely untouched in Office 2010.

In Office 2013, Microsoft now gives you the option of three different Ribbon views, which I'll dub full, reduced, and hidden. Here's how to switch between them:

1. Start any Office 2013 app: Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.

2. In the very top-right corner of the window, just to the left of the Minimize button, you'll see a Ribbon display-option button (which looks like a little arrow inside a box). Click it.

3. Now you'll see three options: Auto-hide Ribbon, Show Tabs, and Show Tabs and Commands. This last is the default view; it shows everything. Choose one of the other two and you'll immediately see the result.

Auto-hide Ribbon is interesting because it leaves you with a totally toolbar-free work area. I find this especially great in Word, as I get maximum workspace for my documents and zero clutter from the Ribbon. (Spreadsheets users would also find this invaluable, no doubt.) But I can click anywhere along the top of the screen to reveal the Ribbon as needed.

Show Tabs is a nice in-between option: it leaves only the Ribbon's tabs, hiding everything else beneath them. Click any tab to reveal its contents; click again to hide them.

Needless to say, you can click that display-option button any time to toggle back to another mode. Give it a try, then let me know which view you like best.

Contributing Editor Rick Broida writes about business and consumer technology. Ask for help with your PC hassles at hasslefree@pcworld.com, or try the treasure trove of helpful folks in the PCWorld Forums. Sign up to have the Hassle-Free PC newsletter e-mailed to you each week.

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Dell working on ARM supercomputer prototypes

Not fazed by a takeover battle looming on the sidelines, members of Dell's research division are putting together the pieces for prototype ARM supercomputers that could be deployed in the future.

Dell has a good idea what an ARM supercomputer would look like, and prototype designs and other "parts" are being experimented with in Dell's laboratories, said Tim Carroll, director at Dell's research computing group.

"It is a solution right now looking for a problem," Carroll said. "ARM is going to have a place. The market is going to tell us what that is."

ARM processors go into most smartphones and tablets and are attracting interest for use in servers. The power-efficient CPUs could help cut energy consumed by servers in data centers while bringing enough processing power to handle fast-moving Web search or social-networking requests. Dell is already offering low- to midrange prototype ARM servers for customers to play with.

Depending on workloads, ARM processors could find limited use in supercomputers, Carroll said. ARM processors will deliver dollar savings per FLOP (floating point operations per second) per rack, and some institution will take a leap of faith and use ARM processors in a supercomputer, Carroll said.

Finding a home for ARM

IntelIntel processor

Some of the world's fastest supercomputers use x86 processors from Intel or Advanced Micro Devices, Power processors from IBM, or Sparc processors from Oracle. ARM processors are currently not considered powerful enough for supercomputers, which are mostly used by research organizations running complex calculations.

The inability to pass a certain processing capability threshold is a handicap for ARM in supercomputing, but Carroll noted that the market can change swiftly, as witnessed by graphics processors, which are now a key co-processor alongside CPUs in supercomputers.

"Do not presuppose you understand all the different use cases that are out there," Carroll said.

The use case for ARM processors has yet to be determined, but curious researchers will find answers, Carroll said. In that regard they will be ahead of the commercial sector, which has deployment cycles and deadlines to keep in mind, Carroll said.

The supercomputing market is also changing with the emergence of the cloud, which could influence the way systems are built, Carroll said. Complex calculations may be done in remote servers, with the cloud being the mechanism for the request and delivery of information.

"We are going to get there. Cloud as a transport mechanism to tie together all these big infrastructure implementations is going to have to happen," Carroll said.

ARM processors are also inexpensive, especially when compared to FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), Carroll said. FPGAs are reprogrammable circuits used in many supercomputers.

Getting better and better

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center has been at the forefront of experimenting with ARM supercomputers. Last year BSC said it was making a prototype supercomputer with Samsung's Exynos 5 dual-core processor, and in late 2011 it announced a supercomputer based on Nvidia's Tegra 3 processors.

Chips for ARM servers are offered by Calxeda, Marvell and Texas Instruments. ARM processors right now are only 32- and 40-bit. But ARM has already announced its first 64-bit ARMv8 architecture and accompanying Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 processor designs based on the architecture. Advanced Micro Devices, AppliedMicro, and others are expected to offer integrated ARM chips for servers.

But it could take a while for ARM to be accepted by the research community, Carroll said. Software written today is still not being targeted at ARM servers, and researchers tend to hold on to old code, Carroll said. ARM, x86, and Power processors run on different instruction sets and support different code bases.

Dell today builds servers with x86 processors. A supercomputer based on Dell's blade design was deployed last year at the Texas Advanced Supercomputing Center, which is based at the University of Texas, Austin. Called Stampede and rated the world's seventh-fastest supercomputer, the machine delivers a peak performance of 10 petaflops. The world's fastest supercomputer at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Titan, delivers peak performance of 20 petaflops.

The Stampede supercomputer has a total of 102,400 processor cores which include Intel's Xeon E5 CPU, Nvidia graphics processors and Intel's Xeon Phi co-processor. The 182-rack supercomputer has 270TB of RAM, 14 petabytes of storage, occupies 11,000 square feet of space, employs 75 miles of network cables and draws 3 megawatts of power.

Dell isn't primarily viewed as a supercomputing vendor, but Carroll wants to meet the needs of customers regardless of processor architecture.

"We're getting better and better," Carroll said.

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Microsoft makes good on promise, publishes list of 41K patents

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Review: MuLab is a little known gem of a digital audio workstation

At first glance, MuLab from MuTools might appear to be one of those simple, feature-deprived efforts you see from a multitudes of software vendors trying to cash in on Garage Band's success. However, just a few minutes with the free edition of this audio recording and MIDI sequencing program, and you'll realize there's much, much more to it than first meets the eye. Indeed, it's now my favorite track-based recording app--and I've used nearly every product on the market. It's available for both PC and Mac.

Where MuLab shines is in hiding its power while still keeping it in easy reach. The secret is right-clicking--much of the program functionality is found in context menus. Everything looks nice, but the use of icons is for the most part spot on--minimal and limited to those that are easily intuited. Too many vendors try to squeeze every feature onto the main screen, use too many similar-looking icons and wind up with a severe case of information overload. The interface isn't perfect, but it's a lot closer to it than the majority of competition.

The session mux lets you see and edit the super flexible audio signal routing.

MuLab supports drag and drop so you can import MIDI and audio files directly from the desktop (there's also an integrated browser). I recreated/imported an entire 12-track MIDI/audio Studio One project in about ten minutes. The program also fully supports VST effects and instruments and includes its own reverb, EQ, sample player, drum set, and synth. You must initially scan for VSTs manually, but I find this approach appealing since you don't waste time automatically scanning each time the program boots as most do.

Besides power and simplicity, perhaps MuLabs greatest asset is its incredibly flexible routing, which reminds one of a modular synthesizer. You can send signals along any path to any effect, MuLab rack (versatile routing and mixing strips), input, output, etc. You can view and edit the entire routing scheme in the session mux routing schematic. Once you're used to the power of free-form routing, it's not easy to go back to the stricter mixing board concept.

MuLab is not without foibles. It makes you confirm deleting any object (it should probably limit this to destructive actions such as deleting audio files) as well as referring to some of these actions as "remove". And unlike most programs, you won't see a representation of what you're recording in real time, you only get a visual waveform after you've finished recording. For those used to programs that provide more feedback on the process, this requires an initial leap of faith, but you'll get used to it quickly and it's less distracting. Some of the visual elements draw your eye to the wrong area, but by and large, the interface is top-notch.

Looks can be deceiving in MuLab. Right-click any object and you'll usually find the functionality you need.

MuLab lacks one feature that many users will miss—audio punch in/punch out. Called punch because the process originally involved a recording engineer punching a button, it allows recording to start when you reach a marker, and cease when it reaches a second marker. You can of course record on another track (MuLab does this automatically where there are overlaps), then cut and paste, but punch recording is a time-saver for quick fixes and for those of us that can't one-take everything. I'd also like to see Music XML support, but I could say the same thing for nearly the entire industry.

One MuLab perquisite is portability; you can install it on a flash drive and take it with you for use on any computer. It's also very light weight for a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation), coming in at less than 19MB--including a fair number of instrument samples. And it's self-contained, i.e. it doesn't install any third-party or Microsoft Visual C++ DLLs as some programs to.

Any musician who records audio and MIDI, even if entrenched with their current DAW, should download MuLab and explore it for an hour or two. It's not what you're used to, so give it some time. It's powerful, clean, simple, and the right-click functionality is highly efficient, not to mention addictive. So addictive that you might have a hard time not plopping down 25 Euros for the 8-track XT version (not the 70s tape format!) or 75 Euros for the 32-track/32-bit version without limits on effects or instruments. Consider that fair warning.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page takes you to the vendor's site, where you can download the latest version of the software. The free 4-track version is perfect for small recording projects like the local school play, church choir, etc. but you'll hear intermittent noise if you exceed its (or the XT version's) track, instrument, or effects limits.

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Chrome update polishes spell-check and fixes bugs

Four weeks after the launch of Google's Chrome 26browser into beta, the final version debuted on Tuesday.

The most notable enhancements in Chrome 26 include a new spell-checking engine, as we saw when the beta version arrived, but also included are several other new features and a few key security fixes.

The software, version 26.0.1410.43 for Windows, Mac and Linux, is being delivered as an automatic update to those already using Chrome, but it's also available as a free download. Here's a rundown of what you'll find.

1. Improved spell-checking

First off, the Chrome team has refreshed the dictionaries for all languages as well as adding support for several new ones, including Korean, Tamil, and Albanian.

"In addition, users who add custom words to the dictionary can now sync their settings to bring those changes to all the devices where they use Chrome," explained Google software engineer Rachel Petterson in a separate post on the Google Chrome Blog.

GoogleThe "Ask Google for suggestions" feature is now available to Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS users.

Meanwhile, the spell-checking feature known as "Ask Google for suggestions," which is powered by the same technologies used by Google search, now includes support for grammar checking, proper nouns, homonyms, and context-sensitive spell-checking in English.

Currently, the new spell-checking features are available only to users on Windows, Linux, and Chrome OS. Mac support is still in the works.

2. Shortcuts for multiple users

Windows users can now take advantage of a new ability to create desktop shortcuts for multiple user profiles. This allows users on a shared PC to sign in and access their own, personalized copies of the Chrome browser complete with their own bookmarks, themes, and settings.

3. An asynchronous DNS resolver

On the Mac and Linux side, meanwhile, Chrome 26 now features an asynchronous DNS resolver, meaning faster performance when downloading Web pages linked to multiple domains.

4. Eleven security fixes

Last but not least, an assortment of bugs were fixed in this new release, including two high-severity flaws. There was one in Web Audio (netting a $1000 bounty for the person who discovered it) and one labeled, "Ensure isolated Web sites run in their own processes." Also patched were four medium and five low-severity vulnerabilities.

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Linux use in enterprises jumps again: survey

The past two years have already seen significant jumps in corporate Linux usage, but now it looks like that trend is continuing into a third year.

To wit: While overall server revenue grew at just 3.1 percent and Windows server revenue increased just 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012 year-over-year, Linux experienced 12.7 percent year-over-year growth for the same period. Unix, meanwhile, was down 24.1 percent.

That's according to the Linux Foundation, which on Wednesday released its 2013 Enterprise End User Report, focusing on Linux adoption. Conducted in partnership with Yeoman Technology Group, the annual study surveys members of the Linux Foundation's End User Council as well as other companies and organizations with sales of more than $500 million or at least 500 employees.

Dominance in the cloud

"We see the growing success of Linux adoption in the enterprise, especially as it's used for the most important areas of business, leading to the rise of Linux and collaborative development across many industries," said Amanda McPherson, vice president of marketing and developer services with the Linux Foundation.

The Linux FoundationLinux continues to gain hold in enterprises (Click image to enlarge.)

A few key trends were particularly interesting.

For instance, enterprise users apparently consider Linux the dominant platform for cloud computing, with nearly 76 percent using Linux servers for cloud and 74 percent planning to maintain or increase Linux use for future cloud initiatives.

The 80-20 rule

When it comes to new applications, services and greenfield deployments, meanwhile, more than 75 percent of responding organizations said they deployed Linux in the last two years.

At the same time, thanks at least in part to its growing prominence in the cloud and big data, the use of Linux for mission-critical workloads has grown dramatically over the past few years, reaching a full 73 percent in 2013, the Linux Foundation said.

The future, however, is where Linux's prospects look especially rosy. Whereas an all-time low of 20 percent of enterprises are planning to purchase Windows servers over the next five years, a whopping 80 percent are planning to increase their use of Linux servers.

Quest for Linux talent

What's driving this ever-increasing investment in Linux? Management's perception is part of the picture, and that remains increasingly positive, with 95 percent viewing Linux as equally or more strategic to the organization than in prior years.

Concerns about Linux, meanwhile, have plummeted, the Linux Foundation reports—with one exception. Namely, "rapid growth is contributing to growing concerns about finding trained Linux talent," the foundation reports.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the Linux Foundation has seen enrollment in Linux training programs increase dramatically over the last few years—not to mention the number of enterprise users contributing to the Linux community.

The full Linux Foundation report is available as a free download from the group's site.

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Microsoft touts Office 365 wins, but customers want more

Microsoft is trumpeting Office 365 customer successes at its U.S. Public Sector CIO Summit on Wednesday, but some of those otherwise happy clients have a wish list of features and enhancements they'd like to see in the vendor's cloud email and collaboration suite.

Microsoft announced eight Office 365 government and education customers, including the governments of Kansas City and Seattle, the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority and King County, Washington.

The company also said that more than 1 million workers are now using Office 365 in federal, state and local government agencies.

A couple of the customers announced on Wednesday touted a variety of benefits and efficiencies derived from the use of Office 365, including lower IT maintenance and equipment costs from turning off on-premise servers, as well as improved employee collaboration and communication.

However, they're also looking forward to continued Office 365 enhancements in areas like compliance with security regulations, usage analytics, software upgrade procedures, system administrator tools and service outage information.

The King County government has licensed Office 365 for about 10,000 employees, and is primarily using SharePoint Online for collaboration and Lync Online for IM, presence and videoconferencing.

The organization has more than 1,000 SharePoint sites for team collaboration, document sharing and project coordination, and Lync is being used widely to do live virtual meetings and record training videos, according to King County CIO Bill Kehoe.

King County plans to take its on-premise intranet to the cloud using SharePoint and will adopt the suite's Exchange Online component for email next year in order to turn off its on-premise Exchange 2010 system.

King County began using Microsoft hosted software with Office 365's predecessor, BPOS (Business Productivity Online Suite) in early 2011. It moved to Office 365 in February of last year.

"One efficiency has been that we don't have to build out an on-premise server environment for SharePoint and Lync," Kehoe said. "We rely on Microsoft's infrastructure, and they do the software upgrades and take care of the system maintenance."

"When we get our intranet fully into the cloud and move email to the cloud, over time those efficiencies will grow even more," he added.

Going forward, Kehoe wants Microsoft to make sure that Office 365 is as fully compliant as possible with U.S. government security regulations, such as the new Criminal Justice Information Service requirements.

"If we have to have a hybrid environment, where we have to build out on-premise servers for certain departments and agencies, that cuts down on our return-on-investment," he said. "The more we can put into the cloud, the more efficiencies and savings we're going to get."

Kehoe also wants Microsoft to beef up the usage analytics on SharePoint Online, which is essential for business managers to determine how effective their collaboration sites are.

A more robust, native enterprise search capability in Office 365 would also be welcome by King County, especially once it rolls out its cloud-based intranet, he said.

Kehoe also thinks Microsoft could improve its process for updating Office 365 on its back end by giving customers more advance notice that these upgrades are happening and what changes they'll introduce, so IT departments are ready.

"Microsoft has been unable to pinpoint for us when a specific upgrade will occur given the cloud environment of Office 365," he said. This makes it difficult for his department to alert the agencies it serves about possible impacts to SharePoint services stemming from the upgrade. Luckily the upgrades themselves have gone smoothly so far, he added.

His team is also working with Microsoft to make sure King County's network connectivity is designed optimally to work with Office 365, to avoid performance issues, which affect the satisfaction and efficiency of end users. In the past, King County had video conferencing quality problems because its network wasn't configured properly to work with BPOS.

Unlike King County, the San Diego County Regional Airport Authority is using Office 365 mostly for email and calendaring. This has allowed it to free up IT department staffers from doing routine administration and management tasks on its now shut down on-premise Exchange servers, and instead focus on more valuable, airport-specific IT work.

"There's a lot of time and effort involved in the care and feeding of on-premise servers, including applying patches, updating the OS, doing security upgrades, and so on," said Howard Kourik, IT director at the Airport Authority.

Kourik would like Microsoft to be more proactive and detailed whenever it has an Office 365 outage or performance glitch, because he finds that the system status website doesn't provide enough clarity and information in these instances.

Other improvements Kourik would like to see are better functionality for system administrators to search email inboxes and archives in response to public information or legal requests, as well as better features for recovering files that end users delete by mistake.

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Intel debuts Haswell-related tools at 2013 Game Developers conference

Intel CPUs have long been popular with PC gamers, but their enthusiasm for the platform has had little to do with the processors' relatively weak integrated-graphics cores. Intel hopes to change that perception with its fourth-generation Core family, code-named Haswell.

At the 2013 Game Developer's Conference, Intel unveiled two new DirectX extensions that give developers access to Haswell's underlying hardware. One extension, dubbed PixelSync, will enable game programmers to create more-realistic smoke, hair, windows, foliage, and other forms that involve complex geometry, according to Intel, by properly compositing partially transparent pixels without bogging the processor down with sorting operations.

Game developer Creative Assembly has been working with Intel to use this new feature in its upcoming title Total War: Rome II.

Creative Assembly Creative Assembly is using Intel's new DirectX extensions in developing its game Total War: Rome II.

"We've shifted our focus toward ensuring that the game looks great whether you're running it on a slim and sexy Ultrabook or a monster desktop," says Mike Simpson, creative director at Creative Assembly. "The new rendering extensions [Intel] provides have been an enormous help in making that dream a reality."

An Intel spokesperson says that the company is releasing the real-time rendering extensions prior to Haswell's launch to give developers time to incorporate them into their products. The second new extension, called Instant Access, allows either the CPU or the GPU integrated into the CPU core to write and read directly to and from system memory, so that the GPU behaves more like a discrete video card.

Intel also revealed that it has been working with the team behind the popular open-source video-transcoding program HandBrake to enable hardware acceleration on its latest Core processors. Handbrake team member Tim Walker says that using Quick Sync Video technology, which debuted with the third-generation Core family, has yielded initial results that "show promise in terms of performance and significantly reduced CPU usage during the decode/encode process, especially for mobile and low-power CPU parts."

Besides introducing the DirectX extensions and HandBrake optimization, Intel announced that the production release of its Perceptual Computing Software Development Kit (SDK) is now available. When game developers use it with Intel's Creative Interactive Gesture Camera, according to Intel, they will be able to "add human-like interaction to computers in the form of close-range finger or hand-tracking, speech recognition, facial analysis, and augmented reality." Earlier versions of the SDK have been available since November 2012, but developers who used it were not allowed to make the applications they created with it commercially available. Intel has now lifted that restriction.

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Microsoft confirms it's shut off Windows 8-Google Apps calendar sync

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AMD provides a sneak peek at its Radeon HD 7990

AMD took the wraps off a new high-end reference-design videocard at the end of the company's GDC press briefing Tuesday night: The dual-GPU Radeon 7990.

Details are exceedingly sparse: Matt Skynner, general manager of AMD's graphics business unit, simply held up the card for the audience to see. "This is the first public showing," Skynner said. "We're not saying much about it other than it's two series-7900 GPUs on a single card, and it's whisper quiet."

AMDLittle is known about AMD's Radeon HD 7990, other than it will have two 7900-series GPUs and three cooling fans.

As you can see from this slide taken from AMD's presentation, it's a full-size, dual-slot card. A heat sink runs the length of the board, and there are three cooling fans. AMD had previously mentioned that the Radeon 7990, code-named Malta, at the CeBit trade show in Germany, but this is the first time the card has been shown.

The Radeon HD 7990 will compete with Nvidia's Titan for fastest video card on the planet when the card ships (unless Nvidia manages to come out with a dual-Titan card). Expect to see cards like this at retail before the end of the first half of the year, because AMD is expected to ship its Radeon HD 8000 series GPUs in the second half.

Earlier in the presentation, AMD's general manager of professional graphics, David Cummings, announced a new series of specialized video cards designed for use in data centers. The AMD Radeon Sky series cards are passively cooled cards that will run in servers streaming games in real time from the cloud to client device such as PCs and set-top boxes. Think OnLive, but better executed.

"Data and services are moving the cloud, and so is gaming," Cummings said. "What do gamers want from the cloud? They want the experience to be easy to install, easy to use, and available from on any device at any location."

"AMD intends to support the whole cloud: The home cloud and the public cloud," Cummings continued. "Cloud gaming requires HD gaming at 30 fps, outstanding compression, optimal density—meaning the best performance per watt and the most users per GPU—minimal latency, and enterprise-grade hardware."

AMDThe AMD Radeon Sky series videocards are designed to power servers for cloud gaming.

To that end, Cummings said AMD will ship three cards in the Radeon Sky series that will be dedicated to cloud gaming: The Radeon Sky 900 will be outfitted with two Radeon GPUs (3584 stream processors in total) and 3GB of GDDR5 memory for each GPU. The Radeon Sky 700 will feature 1792 stream processors and 6GB of GDDR5 memory, and the Radeon Sky 500 will deliver 1280 stream processors and 4GB of memory.

We'll have more news on these products as it becomes available.

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Wells Fargo warns of ongoing DDOS attacks

Wells Fargo warned on Tuesday that its website is being targeted again by a distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) attack.

The bank said most of its customers were not affected. "For customers who are having difficulty accessing the site and mobile banking, we encourage them to try logging on again as the disruption is usually intermittent," Wells Fargo said in a statement.

Wells Fargo is one of several large U.S. banks that have been targeted by cyberattacks in the past six months. A group claiming responsibility for the attacks, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters, said Wells Fargo is being targeted due to the continued availability online of a video clip that denigrates Islam.

The 14-minute trailer, available on YouTube, caused widespread protests last September in predominantly Muslim countries. Google restricted viewing in countries including India, Libya and Egypt but kept it available in most countries because it didn't violate the company's guidelines.

The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters wrote on Pastebin on Tuesday that it was also targeting Citibank, Chase Bank, SunTrust and others.

The group drew up a mock invoice, calculating the cost to a bank of a DDOS attack at about $30,000 per minute. It contained a formula for how much the banks should lose based on the number of times the offensive video has been watched. The group did not spell out how the attacks would cost the banks money or why it was attacking those banks.

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Review: Sticky Password Pro is a valuable tool for keeping passwords safe

If you use the same user name and password on multiple sites, all it takes is for one of them to get cracked, and it doesn't matter how secure your password is or how securely all the other sites store it: You are in trouble. So, you should use a different secure password for each site. Of course, trying to remember dozens or hundreds of different secure passwords borders on impossible.

Sticky Password Pro ($30, 30-day free trial) helps solve this problem. It integrates smoothly with most browsers (and many other applications, such as Skype and Thunderbird), and tracks all of your logins and passwords for you. While many browsers have password managers, Sticky Password has features that go far beyond, and it keeps the same set of logins available to multiple browsers. I can flip between Opera and Firefox and not worry about which one I might have created the password in.

Further, Sticky Password Pro has a password generator which can provide a suitably-randomized string of gibberish according to an assortment of rules: length, characters included, and so on.

Sticky Password's folders help keep things organized, but the excellent browser integration means you rarely need to manually find things.

Accounts can be easily searched in Sticky Password's main window, simply by typing in some portion of either the login or the site. Those who prefer a less ad-hoc method will be pleased with Sticky Password's ability to organize and group your data, so you can sort logins and passwords into work, personal, etc, groups.

Sticky Password 6.0 offers a new interface that makes it easier to move between different categories of stored data. It also adds new features, such as bookmark management, and the ability to export subsets of passwords for sharing—for example, a set of passwords associated with accounts at your job can be exported for coworkers.

Another helpful feature is the ability to exclude specific sites. While Sticky Password works seamlessly most of the time, there are occasional places where an odd interface or non-standard practices cause it to break, which can cause frustration. The ability to do site-by-site exclusion is a useful bit of new functionality.

In general, Sticky Password Pro has maintained a rapid schedule of bug fixes and compatibility updates. However, during the course of testing for this review, I experienced two severe bugs. Both were resolved, but they need to be mentioned. First, I was experiencing constant Firefox crashes when I upgraded to v.18. Sticky Password was listed as compatible, so it took a while before I found out it was the culprit, rendering Firefox effectively unusable. Second, while testing the bookmark feature, my computer would spike CPU usage and hang, forcing me to reboot. This turned out to be related to an issue with Opera passwords, which required me to purge my Opera info. The Firefox bug is fixed in the current version of Sticky Password; the Opera bug remains a known, albeit rare, issue.

I've been using Sticky Password for years with no issues, so it's not generally unstable or buggy, and I am not going to stop using it unless I start seeing issues arise a lot more frequently. It's an excellent product that, if used regularly to generate and manage unique passwords for each site, can reduce the risks of having a single hacked server expose multiple accounts.

Note: The Download button on the Product Information page will download the software to your system.

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App Spotlight: KiteDesk aggregates your cloud accounts and social media

Gmail. Dropbox. Facebook. Twitter. If you're like many busy business folks, you're frequently bopping back and forth between these and other cloud/social-media services. And if you have multiple accounts for any of them, the hassles only increase.

KiteDesk aggregates all your cloud and social services under one roof. That means you need to use only one iOS and/or Web app to view all your feeds, email messages, files, contacts, and more.

I did most of my testing on an iPad, though you can just as easily sign in via your Web browser. There's no cost to use KiteDesk (and no advertising that I can see, so I'm not sure what the revenue model is here); all you do is give permission for it to access one or more Dropbox, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and/or Yahoo accounts.

Obviously the more accounts you add, the more practical KiteDesk becomes. The interface lets you switch between "streams" (i.e. everything from your social networks), messages (of the email variety), people, events, and documents. For any given category you select, you see everything from all of your connected accounts. That's the "aggregator" part of the equation.

And that's where KiteDesk can save you time and clicks: instead of having to log into, say, your three different Twitter accounts, you can see them all in one place. Instead of having to open your Google Drive and Dropbox accounts in search of a particular file, you can search both right here.

There's just one problem with the service, and that's how it presents everything. On my iPad, for example, streams are unnecessarily large: I can see only two items at a time without scrolling.

Facebook and Twitter feeds fare a bit better, often squeezing one or two additional items onto the screen, but overall I think KiteDesk needs to do a better job leveraging the available space.

Same goes for the Web-based version, which shows you a rather randomized array of large tiles, each representing a Facebook post, tweet, etc. The inbox and file views are a little better (on the Web, anyway), relying on a more traditional list.

Ultimately, I found KiteDesk's interface a little too busy for my tastes, a little too overcrowded, but if you're willing to look past that, you may find it a great tool for managing multiple accounts and keeping tabs on all your stuff. I've yet to find anything else quite like it.

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Analysts: Dell could be unstable if alternative bids accepted

A long battle looms as bids are evaluated to take over Dell, but analysts are warning customers of operational instability if an alternative proposal to acquire the company is accepted.

Blackstone Group and Carl Icahn have made counterproposals to acquire Dell, competing with a $24.4 billion bid from company founder and CEO Michael Dell and Silver Lake partners.

A group led by Blackstone offered in excess of $14.25 per share, while Carl Icahn and affiliates offered $15 per share. Michael Dell and Silver Lake offered $13.65 per share when it first announced its intent on Feb. 5 to take Dell private.

Dell in a statement said that a special committee would investigate the counterbids, which "could reasonably be expected to result in superior proposals, as defined under the terms of the existing merger agreement." The board will continue to support the original $24.4 billion until the alternative proposals are reviewed. The board has the option to terminate that agreement.

Research firm Ovum is recommending that large- and midsize enterprise CIOs start risk mitigation planning in the event that Blackstone or Icahn come out on top and take over Dell.

"Neither Blackstone and Icahn care one bit about whether their 'financial engineering' to extract cash from Dell will negatively impact Dell's enterprise customers," said Carter Lusher, chief IT analyst of software and enterprise solutions at Ovum, in an email.

Blackstone or Icahn would cripple Dell's ability to deliver enterprise technology and services in the short term, and innovation over the long term, Lusher said.

Michael Dell's influence may wane if he loses the bid, which could throw the company in a different direction than it has been going, analysts said. Blackstone or Icahn could disrupt the company's operations and move away from the long-term plan of focusing on enterprise products.

Dell and his group have been outbid and the takeover price for Dell will likely go up, said Anthony Sabino, a professor at St. John's University's Peter J. Tobin College of Business.

"They have to increase their bid in order to stay in the game," Sabino said.

The bidders will likely engage in a public battle to win over shareholders, Sabino said, adding that the best offer will prevail.

If Michael Dell endorses one of the competing bids that could shorten the time required by the board to close a deal, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT.

Since rejoining the company in 2007, Dell has kept the company disciplined about chasing its long-term goals while also preserving the cultures of some 25 companies it has acquired over the last six years.

"If a new organization took over ownership, chances are Dell's corporate culture will suffer," King said.

Under a new ownership, Dell could have different leadership and potentially commit to a new strategy, said Alex Khutorsky, managing director of The Valence Group, a merger and acquisition advisory firm. The board will weigh the bids it has received as well as who is behind them, he noted, but the "who" is not likely to be what drives its decision.

"Other than in a fully financed, all-cash bid, a bidder's reputation is always a factor in a board's bid evaluation," he said. "Having said that, it's rarely the deciding factor."

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Windows 8 Store cracks 50K app mark, but now what?

After a sluggish 2013 start, Microsoft's Window 8 App Store appears to be attracting new titles again.

The online outlet vaulted the 50,000 app mark Saturday, according to MetroStore Scanner, a website that unofficially monitors app activity at the Microsoft outlet.

That's a global number, so all those apps may not be available to U.S. users.

Since the high-profile launch of the Windows 8 Twitter app on March 13, only 49 new apps have hit the US version of the Windows Store. However, Metrostore Scanner—the tracking service this report is based on—shows that 3000-plus new  apps have appeared globally during the same time frame.

Among the offerings arriving in the app store on Saturday that helped the outlet jump the 50K milestone were programs covering:

• Sports teams (Boston Celtics, L.A. Dodgers, Miami Heat, Oklahoma Thunder, Tampa Bay Lightening, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Queens Park Rangers);
• Children's books (Sharing, Getting Along and Taking, and The Little Girl Who Loves Make Believe);
• Utilities (a random number generator and URL shortener);
• Education (the story of Christmas, a math challenge, and a Periodic Table challenge); and
• Games (AE Lucky Fishing, Photo Puzzle, Shuffle Party, and Tilez).

Most of the apps are free.

Fits and starts to reach its milestone

Despite Microsoft's vow to "aggressively" reach the 100,000 app mark in the first three months of Windows 8, which was launched in October 2012, it's taken the company five months to reach 50 percent of that ambitious goal.

As might be expected, the app store showed robust growth following the Windows 8 launch. It hit the 20,000 mark in November and apps were being uploaded at a brisk pace of 500 a day.

That pace trailed off and the store didn't reach the 40,000 app milestone until January. In fact, only 5000 of those apps were uploaded from the end of the holidays (December 27) to the end of January.

After that, activity really took a nose dive at the store. Growth flatlined in February, with daily uploads well below 200.

The numbers game wasn't the only area where Microsoft's app store was lacking. The quality of the apps appears to be lagging behind competitors Apple and Google, too.

"After scouring the depths of the three largest app stores, I can safely say that the Windows Store simply doesn't compete with Google's Play Store or Apple's App Store in either quantity or sheer usefulness," observed PCWorld's Brad Chacos.

He acknowledged, however, that might be expected because the other app stores are more mature, as well as more popular at the moment, than Microsoft's fledgling outlet.

Seeking the next 50,000

Meanwhile, Microsoft has started to address the flagging numbers at its app store by throwing money at the problem.

The company announced last week that it will start paying U.S. developers $100 per app published at the Windows Store or Windows Phone Store. App postings per developer are capped at ten for each  store.

Neverthless, Microsoft may be finding itself in a "chicken and egg" situation.

Developers won't be attracted to the app store until they can do some volume business there, and that can't happen until Microsoft sells more Windows 8 hardware.

It can't do that, though, unless it has the kind of apps that make consumers not only buy Windows 8 hardware, but use the new operating system's interface, which is optimized for the apps and not resort to using legacy programs in "desktop" mode.

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ICANN's CEO sees crucial times in efforts for a free Internet

U.S. advocates for a free global Internet need to reach out to other nations to encourage their participation in open governance bodies like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the organization's president and CEO said.

Defenders of a free and open Internet are "facing a pretty dangerous time right now," as countries that want censorship and control of the Internet push their agendas at the International Telecommunications Union and other forums, ICANN leader Fadi Chehadé said last week.

Fadi Chehade, ICANN CEO

"I want to lean into this community," Chehadé said. "This is a time of engagement."

During December's World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), members of the ITU were close to passing resolutions that would have given the ITU ICANN's duties and giving nations calling for censorship a greater voice in the coordination of the Internet's Domain Name System (DNS), Chehadé said.

Representatives of many nations at the WCIT meeting couldn't decide to vote with the U.S., western Europe and their allies, or with China, Russia, and other countries calling for censorship and ITU control of Internet governance, Chehadé said during the Computer and Communications Industry Association's 40th anniversary celebration.

In many cases, Internet policy officials in developing nations haven't had significant interaction with their counterparts in the U.S. and European nations, Chehadé said. Meanwhile, the Chinese government built and paid for a US$200 million African Union complex in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, which opened in early 2012, he noted.

Some African nations have seen the power of the Internet and transformed their economies, said Chehadé, a citizen of Egypt, Lebanon and the U.S. Other Africans see potential, but engagement from U.S. and European Internet activists can help drive the progress, he said.

For many Africans, "it's not about Internet freedom only," he said. "For them, it's about Internet opportunity."

The leader of ICANN since last October, Chehadé told the CCIA crowd of U.S. tech policy leaders he had visited 11 countries in the past month. In some countries, officials at telecom providers had no previous interaction with ICANN, he said.

ICANN is also splitting its Los Angeles headquarters into three, and moving some headquarters functions to Singapore and Istanbul in an effort to better engage the Internet community worldwide, Chehadé said.

Chehadé, a tech entrepreneur and former IBM executive, said global governance issues can help drive the continued growth of the Internet or end its success. It's important for activists now to engage on a global level, he said.

"I truly believe the Internet is one of the last things that unites us all," he said.

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Security experts warn about Iran and North Korea hackers

Cyberattacks supposedly originating from China have raised alarms in recent weeks, but U.S. businesses and government agencies should worry as much about Iran and North Korea, a group of cybersecurity experts said.

China and Russia have significantly more sophisticated cyberthreat capabilities than do Iran and North Korea, but the two smaller countries are cause for concern in international cybersecurity discussions, the experts told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee last wek.

While China and Russia maintain active diplomatic ties with the U.S., which should discourage them from launching major attacks on the U.S., Iran and North Korea may be driven to attack the U.S. out of desperation to maintain their political regimes in the face of global isolation, said Frank Cilluffo, director of the Homeland Security Policy Institute and co-director of the Cyber Center for National and Economic Security at George Washington University.

Iran still lacks the capabilities of Russia and China, but it has been testing its cyberattack abilities in recent months, Cilluffo said. "The bad news is ... what they lack in capability, they more than make up for in intent," he said. "Whatever [capability] they don't have, they can turn to their proxies or buy or rent."

Iranian attackers can buy botnets that can disrupt U.S. businesses, he told the House Homeland Security Committee's cybersecurity subcommittee. Cybersecurity experts have pinned a series of denial-of-service attacks on U.S. banks early this year, and a 2012 attack on Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Aramco, on Iranian hackers.

North Korea is a "wild card," Cilluffo added. The country is actively seeking cyberattack capabilities, he said.

Hackers in China and Russia are largely focused on espionage and theft, but those two countries have less interest at the moment in damage-causing cyberattacks on the U.S., Cilluffo said. The capabilities of China and Russia make them advanced persistent threats, but "they have some modicum of responsibility and recognize that we can retaliate," he said.

Iran and North Korea are more unpredictable, witnesses at the hearing said. Iran seems to be focusing its cyberattack capabilities on retaliation against the U.S. and Israel if the two countries attempt to shut down its nuclear program, said Ilan Berman, vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council, a think tank. That focus makes Iran "particularly volatile," he said.

Iran's attack on Aramco in mid-2012, causing damage to 30,000 computers, was a warning to the U.S. and other countries about the country's growing capabilities, Berman said. Iran is "outlining how they would act in the event of a breakdown in relations," he said. The Aramco attack "can be seen as a signaling mechanism by which Iran is telegraphing to the international community" its plans to attack critical infrastructure if war breaks out.

Representative Mike McCaul, a Texas Republican, asked when cyberattacks cross the line into warfare. "At what point do we respond?" he said.

Berman said he couldn't answer that question. Instead, U.S. defense and intelligence officials need to make that decision, he said.

Cyberattackers are changing their tactics as large U.S. companies harden their defenses, said Richard Bejtlich, CSO at security vendor Mandiant, which recently pinned responsibility for several espionage campaigns on a Chinese government cyberunit. Attackers are often targeting smaller companies that partner with large organizations, and then working their way in to the larger target, he said.

The attacks are often successful because "there's an imbalance between offense and defense," Bejtlich added. "A single attacker or group of attackers can keep hundreds or thousands of defenders busy."

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New report details cyberwar rules, puts hackers in crosshairs

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Blackstone proposes counterbid for Dell, reports say

Blackstone Group has reportedly sent a preliminary counterbid to buy out Dell, which would rival the current proposed offer of US$24.4 billion from Silver Lake Partners and Michael Dell made in early February.

Blackstone, an equity firm, submitted its offer to Dell on Friday, the New York Times reported, citing unnamed sources. The offer sets the stage for Dell to hold discussions with Blackstone about a possible buyout, and Dell has until Tuesday to respond to the offer, according to media reports.

Blackstone's proposed counterbid is in the price range of between $13.65 and $15 per share, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday. That either matches or exceeds the $13.65 per share offered by Michael Dell and equity investor Silver Lake to take the company private.

In a letter sent to Dell, Blackstone envisions shedding Dell's financial services division as part of the buyout deal. Blackstone has already discussed selling that division to GE Financial Services, the Journal reported, citing anonymous sources.

Dell is expected to soon detail counteroffers to the one made by Michael Dell and Silver Lake, which was announced on Feb. 5. Dell on March 22 wrapped up a 45-day "go-shop" period in which other parties could make counteroffers.

Dell cannot comment on the reports, a company spokesman said via email on Saturday. Any deal needs to approved by shareholders.

The Blackstone counterbid could set the stage for a long buyout process in which offers are examined and debated. Some of Dell's major shareholders, including Yacktman Asset Management and Southeastern Asset Management, believe the company is worth more than the $24.4 billion Michael Dell and Silver Lake are offering.

Counteroffers had been rumored to be in the works. On Thursday, the Journal reported that Blackstone had approached Southeastern Asset Management and TPG about a possible counterbids.

According to the Journal's article on Saturday, a possible counteroffer was also in the works by investor Carl Icahn, who is opposed to the current proposed offer and earlier this month reached an agreement with Dell to examine the company's books.

Analysts have said that any long, drawn-out battle is not in the best interest of Dell as it could erode customer confidence.

"It's in everyone's -- company, employees, partners, customers -- best interest to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. The longer this drags on the more likely we will see impact to Dell's business," said Matt Eastwood, group vice president of IDC's Enterprise Platform Group, in an email on Friday.

An open question is whether it's best for the company to execute on the original deal that Michael Dell outlined last month, or whether there would be a change in strategy if his offer isn't accepted, Eastwood said.

"I believe there is more long term value to be unlocked by continuing the business transformation that Dell started five years ago," Eastwood said.

Dell is focusing more on enterprise products as it tries to move away from the low-margin PC market.

Agam Shah covers PCs, tablets, servers, chips and semiconductors for IDG News Service. Follow Agam on Twitter at @agamsh. Agam's e-mail address is agam_shah@idg.com

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South Korean cyberattacks used hijacked patch management accounts

The attackers who unleashed devastating hard-drive wiping malware on South Korean TV stations and banks earlier this week executed at least part of the attack by hijacking the firms' patch management admin accounts, the software vendor involved has said.

According to South Korean antivirus company AhnLab, the 20 March attacks used stolen IDs and passwords for its Patch Manager software to distribute the malware to an unknown number of the 32,000 PCs affected inside the victim firms, including the Munhwa, YTN, Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) TV stations, and the Shinhan, Jeju and Nonghyup banks.

These systems were under the control of the organisations involved and not AhnLab itself, the company emphasised.

Related Articles on Techworld

"Contrary to early reports, no security hole in any AhnLab server or product was used by the attackers to deliver the malicious code," AhnLab said in a statement.

The fact that several of the firms were using the company's software was coincidence; as a local ISV, AhnLab enjoyed a high market share in the country for its security products, the company said.

Exactly how the attackers were able to get hold of the credentials and co-ordinate the attack remains a mystery but indicated that it had been planned for some time, AhnLab director of marketing and business development Brian Laing said.

Some have suggested that the attackers had gained control of at least some of the target PCs using an undetected botnet system, but this remains speculation.

Laing agreed that the attack had attempted to shut down AhnLab's antivirus client as well as that of a second popular South Korean vendor, Hauri.

Claimed by the mysterious 'Whois' team, the attack attempted – and succeeded – in causing maximum disruption by overwriting the Master Boot Record (MBR) on affected PCs after a reboot.

This is remarkably similar to the 'Shamoon' attack last year on Saudi Arabia's oil industry, which also affected about 30,000 systems after executing its disk-wiping routine at a pre-defined moment.

One unusual element of the South Korean malware, dubbed 'Jokra' by Symantec, is that despite being Windows-oriented it contains a script that could be used to wipe Linux systems.

"The included module checks Windows 7 and Windows XP computers for an application called mRemote, an open source, multi-protocol remote connections manager," a Symantec analysis reported.

Suspicions have fallen on North Korea or another state as the culprit simply because of the resources necessary to pull of such a targeted and highly-crafted attack.

The fact that victims were solely South Korean has also reinforced this view. As with so many cyberattacks, evidence is and will probably remain, thin on the ground.

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Legal experts pitch in to appeal AT&T hacker's sentence

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Razer Edge Pro: Our first look at a Windows 8 gaming tablet

At first glance, the Razer Edge Pro is indistinguishable from other Windows 8 tablets: it's 2.2 pounds of matte black metal with a 10.1-inch screen and a single Windows button. It feels heavy in your hands, a little bulkier than the Surface Pro and much, much hotter.

That heat flows from the powerful components nestled inside, including an Nvidia GPU and an Intel Core i7 CPU that render Razer's tablet capable of competing with similarly-priced ultrabooks in terms of performance. I haven't spent enough time with the tablet yet to know whether or not it delivers on that potential—look for our full review next week—but Razer's latest leaves a strong first impression the moment you pull it out of the packaging.

Playing PC games on a tablet is fantastic

The most important thing you need to know about the Razer Edge Pro is that it works—you can use it to play contemporary PC games at decent settings, and the battery lasts long enough to let you play for at least 2-3 hours at a stretch before you need to recharge.

Having complex PC games like Civilization 5 at your fingertips is amazing.

You can augment that with the extended battery pack in the Edge gamepad chassis—which Razer sells separately or as part of a bundle with the Edge Pro— but there's a better reason to accessorize: most PC games suck if you can't use either a mouse and keyboard or a gamepad. I've spent a few hours playing PC games with the Edge Pro, and I've had a blast playing 3D games like Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider and XCOM while curled up on the couch with the gamepad chassis resting on my lap. Being able to play complex PC games from the comfort of my couch is amazing, but it wouldn't work without the gamepad accessory.

Controlling PC games on a tablet is an exercise in compromise

At first blush, I'm disappointed with the design of the Razer Edge Pro. It feels bulky and unwieldy in my hands, more like a prototype than a finished product. It's heavier, thicker and harder to carry than the Surface Pro, weighing in at 2.25 pounds and roughly 12 inches wide.

Snap the Edge into it's gamepad chassis accessory and you have a viable handheld gaming platform, but it's hard to use anywhere besides your couch.

Alone it's not much of a burden, but—as mentioned earlier—it's also not much of a gaming machine sans accessories. Jack the Edge Pro into it's gamepad chassis and you get an excellent platform for 3D action games that's fifteen inches wide, almost four and a half pounds and nearly impossible to safely stow in a backpack or messenger bag. Perversely, to make the Edge Pro shine as a mobile gaming device you have to render it practically immobile.

The screen disappoints

Razer built the Edge with a 10.1-inch IPS display that has a native resolution of just 1366 x 768. It works well enough for browsing the web or playing games from the Windows Store—the Surface RT has the same 1366 x 768 resolution, after all—but it diminishes the fun of playing graphically-intensive PC games or watching HD video. It feels like a compromise that Razer engineers made in order to bolster the tablet's battery life, and while I appreciate being able to play games for more than an hour at a time the Edge Pro looks inferior next to the Surface Pro's vibrant 1920 x 1080 display.

The Edge has a serviceable display, but it's not very vibrant and can't handle 1080p video.

Even so, I don't want to put the Razer Edge Pro down. Eventually I have to, because with the gamepad attached I can't hold it steady for more than an hour before my arms turn to jelly, but I keep picking it back up. I've only had a few days with the Edge Pro and there's still plenty of testing to be done: I'm going to put it through the PCWorld Lab's battery of benchmarking tests, hook it up to my PC and HDTV, then see how it holds up during daily use and deliver a comprehensive review next week.

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