It was a wide-ranging assessment by Clinton, whose administration (1993-2001) played a largely hands-off role when it came to e-commerce. The forum was organized by VeriSign Inc. to mark the anniversary of the March 15, 1985 registration of Symbolics.com, a computer company. The anniversary event ranged from sweeping to whimsical, all of which characterized Clinton’s talk.

Clinton offered a grim take on mainstream media when asked by VeriSign CEO Mark McLaughlin about his favorite Web sites. In response, he ticked off several political sites, including Politico , The Daily Beast and Huffington Post , as well as a few “right wing ones” to get both sides of the political debate. . But Clinton said that many of the political sites “don’t have to do what a newspaper does every day,” which is why he is “really worried about our ability to maintain any newspapers” or anything that “serves as a standard of objectivity.”

“It’s almost impossible given the economics of the modern world for newspapers to continue…,” said Clinton.

Asked by VeriSign CEO Mark McLaughlin what his favorite device is, Clinton named the iPhone, “because I can get so much stuff on it.” The former president also has a Blackberry, but no e-reader .

“I don’t even own a Kindle, yet,” said Clinton, who still prefers physical books.

As for his administration’s role in shaping Internet policy, Clinton said that its most important discovery was the realization “that this was going to be the dominant mode of the communication in the 21st Century,” he said. “Realizing (the Internet’s) importance led to everything else,” he said.

The Clinton administration set out a federal role for the Net in a 1997 report, “Framework for Global Electronic Commerce.” Its overarching conclusion: that “for electronic commerce to flourish, the private sector must continue to lead.”

Even so, he said that the broadband access framework proposed by the Federal Communications Commission may be needed. The deregulation approach helped the U.S. move ahead quicker than some other nations, “but a lot of our competitors now have better cell phone coverage than we do because they had some regulation to guarantee a framework of universal access.

“In general, our entrepreneurial approach is the best one,” said Clinton, but “there are limits to it and sometimes we need a framework to make sure the markets can continue to grow by having more universal access. So I’m hoping the FCC proposals will do that.”

Patrick Thibodeau covers SaaS and enterprise applications, outsourcing, government IT policies, data centers and IT workforce issues for Computerworld . Follow Patrick on Twitter at @DCgov or subscribe to Patrick’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is pthibodeau@computerworld.com .

Source:itnews.com

China’s pricing of these metals is so low that it has become unprofitable for mining companies in U.S. and other Western countries to mine and process them.

The U.S. is almost completely dependent on China for these metals. One metal, neodymium, is used in hard-disk drive magnets, and nearly 100% of its production today is in China.

“China appears to view rare earths as one of the incentives they can offer a technology firm scouting for a new plant location,” said U.S. Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology, in a statement on Tuesday.

“How do we compete in attracting and retaining manufacturing firms that need access to rare earth elements in light of China’s current near monopoly, and their willingness to use their monopoly power to our disadvantage?”

Jack Lifton, a Detroit-based independent consultant on rare earth metals, said that the Chinese have managed to keep the price of neodymium very low. “It’s not about making a profit,” he said, in an interview.

The U.S. has sufficient natural supply of rear earth elements but the cost of mining them is too great because of the price set by China have given it, in effect, a monopoly. “They have priced the stuff so low that they have made it impossible to mine it here,” Lifton said.

If the price of rare earth metals was competitive, Lifton said he believes the U.S. could revive some manufacturing industries.

The major source of rare earth deposits in the U.S. was at Mountain Pass, Calif., but mining operations ceased 2002. The new mine owner, Molycorp Minerals LLC, sells existing deposits, but it is working on a plan to resume mining.

But mining is only part of the process. The U.S. has lost its capacity to manufacture rare earth metals, and those capabilities will have to be reintroduced into the U.S.

One of the last U.S. companies manufacturing rare earth magnets was Valparaiso Ind.-based Magnequench Inc., which was acquired by a Chinese company and eventually moved to China about five years ago.

“This deal and subsequent deals around the globe have allowed China to come closer to cornering the market in rare earth minerals,” wrote the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission in a 2005 report.

“Of equal concern is the transfer of technology, including patents, allowing China to control development of next-generation products using rare earth minerals,” the report said.

Mark Smith, CEO of Molycorp Minerals, told the congressional committee this week that “while the U.S. still possesses the technical expertise, we have lost the necessary infrastructure to manufacture the rare earth metals and magnets that fuel next generation technologies.”

Along with high-tech uses, rare metals are heavily used by defense and, increasingly, for clean energy.

China has acquired 100% of the associated rare earth metal production. This is causing much concern because, Smith said, “China’s national consumption of rare earth resources is growing at an intense pace, consistent with their meteoric GDP growth, and it is leaving the rest of the world with less of these critical materials just as the clean energy economy is beginning to gain momentum.”

Source:itnews.com

Providing full 1080p30 resolution on a 24-inch HD desktop screen will allow executives to interact with customers, employees and others “as if they were sitting across the desk,” Tandberg CEO Fredrik Halvorsen said in a statement.

The EX90 monitor can double as a PC monitor or it can be coupled with a second monitor in a package where one shows all videoconference communications and the other provides for joint viewing of documents and other materials.

The EX90 system also comes with a camera that can tilt at a 90 degree angle to capture and transmit images of sketches, product samples and other documents.

It also includes a separate eight-inch touchscreen that can be used to set up video calls and share content. The touchscreen eliminates the need for the remote device commonly used in larger videoconferencing systems.

A videoconference session can be extended to three other users at once.

Tandberg said that Varian Medical Systems, a manufacturer of medical devices, uses the system.

In a statement, Steve Henderson, program manager at Varian, called the EX90 a “natural extension” of Tandberg’s room-sized telepresence suites. He added that the touchscreen module makes video navigation “easy and intuitive.”

Cisco and Tandberg, like some of their competitors, have mostly focused on high definition videoconferencing as a way to improve the video quality of live sessions, especially those viewed in large specially-equipped rooms, usually referred to as “telepresence.”

In a joint statement on Feb. 9, both companies said they will remain competitors until the close of Cisco’s acquisition of Tandberg . Regulatory approvals are expected before June. Cisco at the time also elaborated on plans to integrate the technologies of the two firms — noting that it will continue to sell both Tandberg’s personal videoconferencing systems and Cisco’s smaller TelePresence Systems.

For the larger “immersive” room-based telepresence systems, Cisco’s product line will remain while Tandberg’s Total Telepresence Solution, including the T3 and T1 product lines, will be adapted custom deployments and a range of other systems, Cisco said.

Cisco agreed late last year to pay $3.4 billion to acquire Tandberg as part of its plan to become an uber video company. The final price was $400 million above Cisco’s original offer .

Cisco also has acquired Pure Digital Technology, maker of the Flip video handheld device, and in October agreed to pay $2.9 billion to buy Starent Networks , a maker of products designed to help wireless carriers pump data to smartphones and other devices.

Tandberg expects to show off the EX90 at the VoiceCon conference next week in Orlando. Pricing for the system has not been announced.

Videoconferencing products are also offered by Hewlett-Packard, Polycom and Logitech, among others.

Source:itnews.com

The Commodore 64 was a home computer running on an 8-bit processor released by Commodore International in 1982. The computer was one of the most popular models of all time, selling close to 17 million units between 1982 and 1994, according to the Computer History Museum.

The revamped computer will be available through the Commodore USA online store, which is set to open June 1, according to the company’s Web site. The computer will be an all-in-one keyboard, with Intel’s 64-bit quad-core microprocessors and 3D graphics capabilities, according to the site.

To conform with the times, the PC also offers up to 500GB of hard drive storage and 4GB of RAM. Also included are a DVD-RW drive, a touchpad, four USB ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port and a DVI (Digital Visual Interface) port to connect monitors. No price information was given on the Web site.

Commodore USA is a new company that has licensed the Commodore name from Commodore Gaming, which makes games for PCs and consoles. The PC company is trying to invoke the glory of the Commodore 64′s past to promote the new PC. On its Web site, the company shows an image of the old Commodore 64 with the caption “you loved us then,” and then an image of the new PC, with the caption “you’ll love us again.”

The device is small, measuring 17.5 inches (0.44 meters) wide and 2 inches (0.05 meters) tall, Commodore said. “It’s designed to take up far less room — and use far less energy — than any other desktop computer,” Commodore USA said. The PC will run the Linux, Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

But will it find buyers? The glorious past of Commodore PCs might not be repeated for its successor, said Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates.

“It’s a weird legacy thing with modern inerts,” Kay said. Commodore PCs had a heavy following in the 1980s among hobbyists, but the glory days may not translate to better sales with price-conscious customers today, Kay said.

Commodore started selling Commodore 64 in 1982 for US$599 and managed to reduce the price to $199 over time, a revolutionary price then, said Jack Tramiel, former chairman of Commodore International, during a panel discussion in late 2007.

During the same panel, Apple co-founders Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs approached Commodore with an Apple II prototype, which was much more advanced in color, graphics, sound and games. Apple at the time didn’t have the money to make and sell the Apple II, and was hoping Commodore would push the design to market. Commodore, however, preferred to develop the Commodore 64 as a simpler, lower-cost, black-and-white-only machine.

Commodore wanted to serve the “masses,” not the “classes,” Tramiel said during the discussion. Commodore kept updating the original Commodore 64 design and became the first to sell more than a million PCs, but the company filed for bankruptcy in 1994 and liquidated its assets. In the meanwhile, Apple managed to survive, and the Apple II became one of the most recognized computers in the 1980s.

Commodore computers were made for enthusiasts and came with fairly arcane software and hardware elements, Kay said. Kay bypassed a Commodore and bought an Apple II in the early 1980s, as it had software that made the computer easier to use.

“It wasn’t so easy [to use a Commodore], the way Apple always understood the experience should be,” Kay said. That made the Apple II computer better for new users entering the computer market.

Source:itnews.com

The new microSDHC card targets the smartphone market and uses third-generation 32nm lithography techniques with 3-bit-per-cell NAND flash technology.

Most manufactures of NAND flash products use 2-bit-per-cell multi-level cell (MLC) memory.

“With the large volume of photos, videos and music that consumers create and carry around, a high-capacity memory card is a must-have component of today’s smartphone,” said Sanjay Mehrotra, SanDisk’s president, in a statement. “This is the highest-capacity card of its type, and SanDisk is pleased to be the first to ship such an advanced product. This marks yet another important first in our innovative history in the flash memory industry.”

SanDisk said 32GB cards are already needed by many users as smartphones increasingly serve as mobile offices, and incorporate music players, cameras, video recorders, GPS devices and gateways to the mobile Internet. The 32GB SanDisk microSDHC card, SanDisk noted, can store enough music to play music on more than 35 round-trip flights between San Francisco and New York before repeating a single song.

SanDisk microSDHC cards are also available in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities.

The 32GB SanDisk microSDHC card is available now on SanDisk.com as well as on U.S. and European e-commerce. Worldwide retail availability is expected to follow next month.

The new card comes with a 5 year limited warranty and has a retail price of $199.99.

Source:itnews.com

That free registration gets you into the expo hall for next year’s show, which will run January 25-29 in San Francisco. Once again, Expo will be held at Moscone Center. The free registration for next year’s show offer ends March 8.

What will you see on the show floor come January 2011? It’s a bit early to say, obviously, but Expo organizers promise that the Mobile Application Showcase–one of the most crowded exhibits at this month’s event–will double in size next year. That’s to accommodate not only the returning exhibitors–and there were about six dozen by my count–but also anticipated interest from developers looking to make a splash with their iPad-centric applications.

The 2010 edition of Macworld Expo wrapped up on February 13. Despite the fact that Apple skipped out on the annual Mac trade show, this year’s Expo drew 20,000 attendees and 250 exhibitors to San Francisco for the five-day event, according to organizers IDG World Expo. (Both IDG World Expo and Macworld are owned by IDG.) The recent Expo also featured more than 150 conference sessions.

Source:itnews.com

The retail giant announced the deal on Monday following widespread speculation that an acquisition would be coming soon. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Vudu has developed software that is built into TVs and Blu-ray players and lets users rent or buy high-definition movies and TV programs over the Internet for instant viewing. It aims to make the process easy because users don’t have to connect their TV to a computer to browse for and buy movies.

Vudu has licensed content from most of the major studios and offers around 16,000 movies. It will become a subsidiary of Wal-Mart and continue developing streaming Internet applications and services, the retailer said.

This isn’t Wal-Mart’s first attempt at selling movies online. It sold movie downloads for about a year until it shut down the service at the end of 2007. Wal-Mart continues to sell digital music online.

The retailer expects to close the deal in the next few weeks, it said.

Vudu started out selling a box that users connect to their TV to browse for and purchase movies. But the business model for such standalone boxes has proved challenging. Vudu competitors, such as Netflix, began building their technology into devices that were already in people’s homes, such as the Xbox.

Vudu still sells the box, but its technology is now also built into TVs and Blu-ray players. Wal-Mart’s statement about the acquisition made no mention of selling the standalone box.

Source:itnews.com

Source:itnews.com

A computer support and repair outfit, Rescuecom creates its rankings by comparing the number of computers shipped by each manufacturer with the number of support calls Rescuecom receives for that same maker. Rescuecom says that reliability depends on both the quality of components and the strength of customer support. If that support is lousy, customers will go looking for third-party options like Rescuecom.

According to Rescuecom’s analysis, Macs had an 8 percent market share in the four quarters of 2009, but accounted for only 2.2 percent share of service calls. That gives Apple a score of 365, well ahead of rivals like Asus and Levono (tied at 305), and way ahead of Toshiba (199) and HP (149). But Apple’s score is a bit below the 374 it received in the third quarter report for 2009, and well under the 394 it got in the second.

Nonetheless, the good news for Apple comes at the same time as word that the company has claimed the number three position in BusinessWeek’s annual customer service survey.

Don’t expect the results to soothe those irate buyers of the 27-inch iMacs with yellow-tinted or cracked displays. But kudos to the folks in Cupertino for maintaining their shiny brand.

Source:itnews.com

Based on a recent study of traffic passing through its global network,  Zscaler’s “State of the Web — Q4 2009″ report also notes trends including issues with botnets, corporate Internet access policies, and the use of the Internet Explorer 6 browser. Officially being released on Tuesday, the study analyzes Web traffic volumes covering several thousand Web transactions per second and hundreds of billions of Web transactions.

[ InfoWorld's Roger Grimes explains how to stop data leaks in an enlightening 30-minute Webcast, Data Loss Prevention, which covers the tools and techniques used by experienced security pros. ]

Zscaler found attackers were prone to embedding JavaScript or malicious iframes to pull content from an attacker’s server, whereupon the content is rendered in a user’s browser, said Mike Geide, senior security researcher at Zscaler, in an interview on Monday.

“The malicious content will then compromise the end user either through a vulnerable browser or through vulnerable client applications such as Adobe Acrobat Reader,”  Geide said. Malware then can steal victims’ credentials.

“It’s recommended that users take extra precaution when doing financial transactions online and if at all possible to utilize Web-based protection,” Geide said. He acknowledged Zscaler offered services to remedy the issue but noted the company is not the only vendor to do so.

Zscaler also found significant use of the Internet Explorer 6 browser, even though it has been succeeded by two more secure generations of Microsoft’s browser.  Version 6, for instance, does not maintain malicious URL and phishing block lists, the report said.

Botnets present issues, according to Zscaler. “We’re seeing a lot of botnets,”  Geide said. Zscaler blocks botnets, which can take over systems, said Geide.  Zscaler also found some users attempting to deploy anonymizers, which hide a client IP address to enabie access to undesirable content such as gambling or pornography sites, he said.

Another issue, darknets, involves unallocated IP space and infected hosts on the network. This can lead to disclosures of internal information, said Geide.  Also, attackers have launched phishing attacks from sites such as the recently removed fake social networking site, coolxd.com, according to Zscaler.

In other findings, Zscaler found that content such as JPEG and GIF was more prominent than JavaScript and HTML. “The Web is very media-rich at this point in time,” Geide said.

Additionally, ZScaler found that the Firefox browser is slowly gaining wider adoption, although the company needs more time to determine precise browser usage trends. “Internet Explorer is still leaps and bounds ahead of Firefox as far as the enterprise user goes,” said Geide. Firefox gained more than 6 percent in market share in December, Zscaler found.  Still, Internet Explorer’s share was at about 70 percent by the end of 2009.

Zscaler found Facebook predominant as a social networking site.  Three-quarters of social networking traffic traversing the Zscaler network went to Facebook.

This story, “Attackers going after end users rather than servers,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in security at InfoWorld.com.

Read more about security central in InfoWorld’s Security Central Channel.

Source:itnews.com