Downadup worm replicates itself at astonishing speed!

Call it Conficker, Downadup or Kido - the fact is the nasty worm is spreading at a very rapid speed! There is no checking the pace at which it is infecting PCs; and with already more than 9 million victims, including corporate networks worldwide, the worm is still going strong!
The Downadup worm made its first appearance two months back, exploiting a critical Windows flaw in the way the Server Service handles RPC requests. A blended threat, the malware relies upon many attack vectors - from brute-force password guessing to hitching rides on USB sticks - for replicating itself to spread throughout a network.
The unique rate of speed at which the worm replicates has perplexed experts. Security researcher, Derek Brown, of TippingPoint's DVLabs Team, said: "The notion of using multiple attack vectors is not terribly new. The unique thing about this worm is the speed at which it has spread and I think that's a result of the big size of the Microsoft vulnerability."
Experts also opine that though the Downadup malware got started because of the Microsoft flaw, it later proliferated quickly through the unpatched Windows operating systems of the users.
Though the malicious worm knows no land barriers, the hardest hit countries, as per Symantec Security Response, are China and Argentina. According to the Symantec vice president, Alfred Huger, China accounts for almost 29 percent of the infections tracked, Argentina was next in line with over 11 percent infections.

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Computer worm called 'authentic risk

If you’ve never heard the words “Conficker” or “Downadup,” wait a few hours.

They’re rapidly becoming household words for personal computer owners.
Various major newspapers and television news shows reported Friday morning that the latest computer worm might now infect as many as 10 million computers worldwide.
According to a report in the Detroit Free Press, the worm is so virulent because it seems to “mutate” and launch “brute force attacks” that relentlessly try thousands of letter and number combinations in codes to steal personal passwords and login information.
Because most computer users choose passwords that they can remember easily, the words might also be something the worm can guess easily. Once in control of a computer the worm can launch spam, phishing attacks, shut down the Internet with massive traffic or access bank records.
According to F-Secure, an antivirus software company, the Conficker worm is spreading at a rate of 1 million new machines a day. It can be spread by USB stick also.
F-Secure has updated its Downadup removal tool, and the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team has issued Alert TA09-020A, which describes how to disable AutoRun on Microsoft Windows systems in order to help prevent the spread of Conficker/Downadup via USB drives.
According to Symantec, the top infected countries in order of infection are: China, 28.7 percent; Argentina, 11.3 percent; Taiwan, 6.7 percent; Brazil, 6.2 percent; India, 5.8 percent; Chile, 5.2 percent; Russia, 5 percent; Malaysia, 2.8 percent; Columbia, 2.1 percent; and Mexico, 1.9 percent.
Philip Templeton of PT Technologies in Athens said everyone should keep his or her virus protection and software updates current.
“I have seen in the last four to six months more people getting viruses,” said Templeton. “But no matter what antivirus software you buy, nothing is 100 percent. Make sure your Windows Firewall is on, and it doesn’t hurt to change passwords periodically. I usually advise to make this a quarterly chore.”

Windows 7 beta to be offered through Feb. 10

Hints at weaker-than-expected demand since Jan. 10 launch

Microsoft announced Friday night that computer enthusiasts will have a while longer to get their hands on the beta version of Windows 7.

In a blog posting, Microsoft said that the test version of the operating system will be available for download through February 10. Previously, Microsoft had said that the OS would only be open through late this month.

We are at a point where we have more than enough beta testers and feedback coming in to meet our engineering needs, so we are beginning to plan the end of general availability for Windows 7 Beta," Microsoft's Brandon LeBlanc said in the blog posting. "Because enthusiasm continues to be so high for the Windows 7 Beta and we don't want anyone to miss out, we will keep the Beta downloads open through February 10th."
Those who start the download process before February 10 will have until February 12 to finish the task.
The deadline applies to the general public, while members of Microsoft's TechNet and MSDN developer programs will continue to have access to the code, LeBlanc said.
CEO Steve Ballmer announced the beta of Windows 7 during his speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on January 7. After a slight hiccup, Microsoft made the code available on January 10.

Keep Your laptop data safe,now fix it.

Follow InfoWorld's encryption-based data-protection plan, which can safeguard your most at-risk PCs .

The largest single type of security breach is the stolen or lost laptop, according to the Open Security Foundation, yet these computers are among the least protected of all IT assets. The costs of a data breach can be huge, including the loss of trade secrets, marketing plans, and other competitive information that could have long-term business damage, plus the immediate costs of having to notify people if their personal information was possibly at risk from the breach. Particularly in a recession, enterprise management can't afford to take these risks lightly.

There is a way for IT to protect those laptops and the confidential information they contain: encryption. Without the combination of password security and encryption, any halfway-competent hacker has no problem siphoning hard drive contents and putting it to nefarious use.
[ Stay up to date on key security issues and solutions in InfoWorld's Security Adviser blog. Keep abreast of the latest mobile developments in the Mobile Pulse blog. ]
Perhaps the most important advantage of full disk encryption, though -- beyond the peace of mind it gives your business's lawyers -- is the "safe harbor" immunity that accrues under many data privacy regulations. For example, credit card disclosure rules don't apply to encrypted data, and even California's strict data-disclosure statute makes an exception for encrypted records -- provided you can prove they're encrypted. That's trivial with full disk encryption but not so easy with partial encryption techniques, which depend on user education for safe operation.
A key challenge for IT in deploying encryption on its laptops is the sheer number of encryption options available. Some Windows Vista editions, as well as the forthcoming Windows 7, support Microsoft's built-in BitLocker encryption, and numerous third-party encryption products cover the range of mobile operating systems from XP through Windows 7, Linux, and Mac OS X. Encryption granularity is widely variable as well, ranging from protecting individual files to encrypting virtual disks to deploying fully armored, hardware-based full disk encryption. Prices range from free to moderately expensive.
If you've put off laptop data security due to perceived technical shortcomings or high costs, you need to take another look at the field -- before you lose another laptop.

The maximum encryption protection possible: TPMIdeally, you'll deploy the full-metal-jacket approach to laptop data protection: full disk encryption using the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) technology. If you can afford the cost, waste no time with inferior methods. All you need is a laptop containing a TPM security coprocessor and, optionally, an encryption-enabled hard drive from one of the major hard drive manufacturers.
The TPM is a chip soldered on to the laptop's motherboard, providing hardware-based device authentication, tamper detection, and encryption key storage. The TPM generates encryption keys, keeping half of the key information to itself, making it impossible to recover data from an encrypted hard drive apart from the computer in which it was originally installed. Even if an attacker gets the user's part of the encryption key or disk password, the TPM-protected drive's contents can't be read when connected to another computer. Further, the TPM generates a unique digital signature from the motherboard in which it's embedded, foiling attempts to move the TPM chip itself to another machine.

TPM-enabled full disk encryption, especially hardware-based implementations of it, provides one other key benefit to enterprises: data erasure upon laptop decommissioning or repurposing. A common bugaboo in the enterprise is the accidental disclosure of data when seemingly worthless outdated laptops are discarded or sold, or transferred to another employee. Erasing sensitive information in such situations is not trivial, and even removing and physically mangling a laptop's hard drive is no guarantee against disclosure. However, because TPM has absolute control over the encryption keys -- remember, half of the key information is stored with the TPM itself -- you can simply tell TPM to forget its keys, and the hard drive is instantly reformatted and effectively rendered nonrecoverable. Disk sectors aren't zeroed, but no computationally feasible method exists today to decrypt the residue.

A great many enterprise-class laptops manufactured in the last two to three years shipped with embedded TPM chips; Apple's Macs are a key exception, as none since 2006 include a TPM chip. But the TPM chips must be explicitly enabled to use them as the authentication mechanism for encryption.
If your laptops have a TPM chip, don't try enabling it without carefully following the vendor's instructions -- otherwise, you could accidentally wipe out the laptop's hard drive. Before enabling the TPM chip in a laptop, you must first take ownership of it, a process that establishes user and management-level passwords and generates the initial set of encryption keys. The management password lets IT administration monitor the inventory of TPM devices, recover lost user passwords, and keep track of usage.
A TPM works with the laptop's resident operating system to encrypt either the entire hard drive or most of it, depending on the OS encryption implementation. (Microsoft's BitLocker, for example, requires a small, unencrypted initial-boot partition). Alternatively, a TPM can interoperate with encryption-enabled hard drives to perform encryption entirely outside of, and transparent to, the operating system.
The TPM technology isn't perfect, but it provides very solid protection in the most common incident, where a laptop is lost or stolen and the user has not left it logged in. If the laptop is powered off, TPM protection is absolute. Most implementations use 256-bit AES encryption, which is considered uncrackable for the foreseeable future. Powering up the device requires entering pre-boot credentials in the form of a password, a PIN, a smartcard, biometric data, a one-time-password token, or any combination of these. If the lost laptop is powered on (but not logged in), or just powered off, an attacker would have to use extraordinary procedures to recover the encryption keys from live memory.
However, if a lost device is powered up and logged in, a TPM provides zero protection. An interloper can simply dump the data off the hard drive in the clear using ordinary file copies. Thus, it's essential that TPM-protected systems have noncircumventable log-in timeouts using administrator-protected settings.

To achieve the ultimate in full disk encryption protection requires hardware-enabled encryption on board the hard drive. Drive-based encryption closes all of TPM's loopholes, since the encryption key is no longer stored in OS-accessible memory. Hardware-based full disk encryption also eliminates the performance penalty incurred by software-based full disk encryption, although with today's fast, processors, that software encryption overhead is not noticeable to most users.

The cost for TPM protection starts at zero for Microsoft's BitLocker, which is built into Vista Enterprise and Ultimate, Windows Server 2008, and the forthcoming Windows 7. Major laptop manufacturers also sell software bundles that enable TPM in any Windows version, including XP, such as Wave's Embassy Trust Suite and McAfee's SafeBoot. The advantage of bundled software is sole-source support and pre-tested configurations.
You can also roll your own software protection using stand-alone packages such as PGP Whole Disk Encryption.
All these products support a wide range of enterprise-class management tools that let you enforce uniform policies and centrally store encryption keys, including special data-recovery keys that solve the problem of lost passwords and prevent employees from locking employers out of their hard drives.

If you can't do TPM, here's your plan B for encryptionAlthough the deployment of TPM-based full description is ideal, you may count the cost of full disk encryption and come up short-funded, especially if you just refreshed your enterprise laptops with non-TPM models. Forklifting your entire laptop population is an undeniably expensive proposition, as is replacing the non-TPM laptops if your company has a mix of TPM and non-TPM laptops. If you can't go all TPM, there's a plan B that can give you much of the encryption benefits you need.
You might think that plan B involves partial disk encryption, typically deployed by designating specific folders on a laptop as encrypted; as files are moved into that folder, they are automatically encrypted. Apple and Microsoft have long offered this form of encryption, via FileVault on the Mac and the Encrypted File System tools in Windows XP and Vista. But this approach has a major flaw: It depends on users to properly store sensitive data only in encrypted form.

A variation of folder-level encryption is virtual disk encryption (VDE), in which a single disk file contains a virtual disk image that the user can mount when needed; this virtual disk collects all sensitive files in one location. Microsoft's BitLocker offers this feature in all Vista editions, as well as in Windows Server 2008 and Windows XP. Third-party products such as PGPDisk and even free open source software programs such as TrueCrypt have VDE capabilities. Many of these third-party utilities are easier to use than BitLocker, so they can save you some implementation expense.
Another form of partial disk encryption is to apply encryption to specific files, typically those residing on corporate servers that users want to open locally. In this approach, users must enter a password every time they open a protected file. IT not only is on the hook to ensure that all sensitive files get encrypted but also has no way to stop users from simply saving the opened file as an unencrypted copy. Still, this protection is better than nothing and is widely available via free disk utilities. But key management can be a problem, and these file-level encryption tools generally don't support multifactor authentication.

But the best plan B to TPM-enabled full disk encryption isn't any of these partial disk methods. The best plan is software-only full disk encryption, in which either the operating system or a third-party program performs the same encryption as with TPM but uses another method to store the encryption keys, such as a thumb drive or a smart card.

The good news is that virtually all-TPM full disk encryption suppliers' offerings, including BitLocker, can operate in this software-only mode, which relies on a removable hardware token so that you can use this approach for your non-TPM devices while having a consistent encryption method to manage across all your laptops.
It's true that software-based full disk encryption is less secure than if you have a TPM-equipped laptop: The entire drive can still be encrypted, but a determined hacker will have more opportunities to gain access through compromised keys. For example, if the key-storage token is left with the notebook computer (how likely is that?), the hacker may be able to simply plug the token in and gain access to the drive contents. Even multifactor authentication in this scenario is subject to attack by inspection, since the key token is not tightly bound to the system motherboard.
Still, when TPM-enabled encryption is not an option, pure software full disk encryption can still give you considerable peace of mind, as well as provide the "safe harbor" benefits afforded encrypted systems in data-privacy regulations. Software full disk encryption solutions have also been around long enough that they're available for most mobile computing platforms, including Linux and Mac OS X.
TPM technology changes to comeAlthough TPM full disk encryption with hardware-based encryption in the hard drive is the best you can do for data protection today, security researchers are constantly testing TPM's mettle and devising improvements to it.
One potential vulnerability of today's separate TPM chip implementation is that keys must be transported across conductors in the motherboard to the CPU for software-based full disk encryption, or to the hard drive for hardware-based full disk encryption. That could provide an entry point for a hacker. That's why a major vendor trend is to move all TPM-oriented data manipulation on to the CPU chip set in the form of customized silicon. Intel has advertised its vPro solution, which is part of the upcoming Danbury processor and Eaglelake chip set. This feature will perform all encryption and decryption for SATA and eSATA drives without involving the CPU, OS device drivers, or even the hard drive itself.

Such an approach could make TPM even more secure. But there's no reason to wait until such chips are standard in laptops. With today's TPM-equipped laptops, and with the software-based fallback option for non-TPM laptops, you have a platform for a consistent, manageable, secure deployment strategy.

Google Beats Estimates, Profit Takes a strike

Just 13 Months Ago, Google's Stock Hit an All-Time High of $747; Today $314.

Internet giant earns $5.10 a share, topping estimates, despite a dreary economy. Net income drops 68% on charges.

Internet advertising behemoth Google continued to show strong sales and profit against a thorny economic backdrop.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based company reported an 18% jump in fourth-quarter revenue to $5.7 billion for the period ended Dec. 31. That's up from $4.83 billion in the year-earlier quarter.
Excluding commissions paid to advertising partners, Google posted sales of $4.22 billion, better than the $4.12 billion in sales expected by analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.
Google reported fourth-quarter net income of $382 million, down 68% from $1.2 billion a year ago. However, excluding certain charges, such as the cost of employee stock options, the company earned $5.10 a share, much better than consensus estimates of $4.95 per share.
"We had tight control over costs" in the quarter, said Google chief executive Eric Schmidt in a conference call with analysts.

"We don't know how long this period will last," Schmidt said, but he added that Google remained focused on long-term growth.
Schmidt pointed to the scaling back of non-profitable Google projects such as Google Video, Google Notebook, and status update service Jaiku. He also mentioned a quarterly decline in costs paid to advertising partners.
"Google continues to take market share, and they continue to have any number of levers to pull on both the revenue and the cost side that makes them very formidable in any economic environment," said Derek Brown, analyst with brokerage Cantor Fitzgerald.
Over the last quarter of 2008, Google said it spent about $368 million on capital expenses - mostly on data centers, servers and networking equipment.
As of Dec. 31, Google said it employed 20,222 full-time workers, slightly up from the 20,123 it employed at the end of September.
In order to retain employees, Google also announced that it would be starting a stock option exchange program from the end of January through early March.

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Google joined Apple and IBM as one of the few tech companies to report good news in its most recent earnings report. The search giant beat analysts' estimates today, though it reported a sharp drop in net income for the fourth quarter to $382 million, or $1.21 a share, well below the $1.2 billion, or $3.79 a share from a year ago.
Revenue for the fourth quarter rose 18 percent from the same period last year to $5.70 billion and three percent from the previous quarter. Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) also suffered significant non-cash-impairment charges of $1.09 billion related primarily to its investments and AOL and Clearwire, a wireless broadband service that has partnered with Intel to build WiMax services across the country.
"The results were better than I expected," IDC analyst Karsten Weide told InternetNews.com. "Google is doing great because about half of the online ad spend in the U.S. is search and they have about half that market. They are leveraging the biggest market out there."
On a conference call with financial analysts, Google CEO Eric Schmidt noted "strong search query growth year on year." He also credited "tight control over costs that may have eluded us in the past, but I think we've got the formula down now."

Schmidt acknowledged AOL and Clearwire were "significant writedowns," but thinks there's a longer term payoff to come. "Both deals made sense for us and continue to fit with our business philosophy."
While neither Schmidt or other Google executives on the call got very specific about new initiatives or product plans, he did say the company is looking at new ways to recognize the contextual meaning of a search phrase, which it would be rolling into its market leading search engine.
The past year saw Google branch out significantly beyond its original model of text-only results. In 2008 Google tripled the number of non-text only results, which includes video, images, blogs and books, said Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's senior vice president or product management.
He also said Google's $125 million settlement in October with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers promises to make content from millions of out-of-print books accessible online and even create a new market for the sale of those books.

Analyst Weide said Google still faces challenges growing the display side of its ad business. He said Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) is the online display ad leader with about a 16 percent share in a very fragmented market. "Search advertising isn't always going to be the biggest segment. It probably will still be in five years, but not always and right now Google is essentially a one-trick pony," he said.
Weide also said YouTube's been "a sinkhole" for Google, which bought the video site for over $1.65 billion in 2006. "User generated content can work as an advertising source, but it's going to take a while," said Weide. "I think Google is going to have to acquire long form, professional content because big name advertisers want premium content not grainy, amateur video."
Rosenberg said Google continues to experiment with different ad approaches for YouTube. "It's hard to match the right format with the right content," he said. "We have to come up with a standard format to make it easier."
New employee stock options
Google also announced a new stock options plan, beginning January 29, that's designed to help retain employees. Schmidt said about 85 percent of its 20,000 employees had stock options "under water," or priced higher than the current trading price of stock.
Under the voluntary plan, employees can exchange all or a portion of their existing stock options for the same number of new options. Google said it expects the new options to have an exercise price equal to the closing price per share on March 2, 2009. Stock options with exercise prices above the March 2 closing price would be eligible for exchange, though Google said details of how the plan will work could change.
In after hours trading Thursday, Google shares were down $8.18 to $298.32.

New York City & Google starting a new trend in city-oriented tourist Web sites

Google and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg have launched a new initiative today, designed at helping tourists and residents to get around New York without feeling like they’ve missed any of the city’s exciting places and events.

In what could be a model for other cities, New York has partnered with Google to launch a Web site for tourists and a high-tech visitor's center. Interactive tables and a Video Wall let visitors explore New York, get local opinions, and save information. An forecaster called New

York's high-tech center an development of "out-of-home" marketing.

New York City may be starting a new trend in city-oriented tourist Web sites. In partnership with Google, it has launched the NYCgo.com site, a portal to promote tourism, and opened a high-tech information center for visitors. The Web site uses Google Maps and other information to make it easy for a visitor or a local resident to quickly find things to do, places to go, restaurants and other points of interest. The site also provides discounts and promotions.
Just Ask the Locals
The information center at 810 Seventh Avenue offers touch-sensitive horizontal screen tables that also use Google Maps. In a statement on The Official Google Blog, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote that the new Web site and information center will "help make it easier for both visitors and residents to explore the energy , excitement and diversity of New York City's five boroughs."
Visitors can move around a table's map of the city's five boroughs. If the user has selected a category such as Museums & Galleries or Dining, the map will flag those places as a token is moved around. Each flagged item can then be opened to reveal photos and more information.
Since there are probably 10 million opinions about the city, no visitor's center would be complete without at least a few virtual New Yorkers. A visitor can browse a Just Ask The Locals section, where famous New Yorkers give recommendations.
'Custom Itinerary Flyover'
Visitors can save sites, recommendations and more to a physical disk and take it to a Video Wall where a "custom itinerary flyover" soars virtually over a detailed, three-dimensional map of the city. The wall also offers yet more advice from celebrities and local experts, and the visitor can send the itinerary to his or her cell phone, e-mail, or print it.
Andrew Frank, an analyst with Gartner, said such a high-tech center for visitors could be a marketing tool for other cities.
If done with an eye toward ease of use, as New York's appears to be, Frank indicated that such centers could appeal to the wide range of technological sophistication among visitors and locals in any city. He also said New York's center is another indication of "the evolution of out-of-home" marketing experiences, which increasingly are accompanied by ways to measure how people use them.
But, Frank noted, an issue with these centers -- and even Web sites -- is keeping them up to date, not only with data , but with the latest technology and fastidious, shining surfaces.

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Google powers new NYC information hub

Google Maps and Google Earth are the centerpiece of NYCGo, a new information and reference project launched by the New York City government to provide resources to both visitors and locals. Wednesday's launch announced the debut of NYCGo.com, a Google Maps-fueled local search and reference site, as well as the unveiling of the renovated New York City Information Center a few blocks north of the tourist-heavy Times Square district.
NYCGo.com contains not just Google map and search data, but also travel deals from Travelocity and local content from what-to-do powerhouse Time Out New York, nightlife culture magazine Paper, the New York Observer, and eco-living guide Greenopia.
The information center, located on Seventh Avenue between 52nd and 53rd streets, is equally Googly. The city's technocratic mayor, Michael Bloomberg, even contributed a guest post to the official Google blog to announce it: "The Information Center features interactive map tables, powered by the Google Maps API for Flash, that let you navigate venues and attractions as well as create personalized itineraries, which can be printed, emailed or sent to mobile devices," the blog post explained. "Additionally, there's a gigantic video wall that utilizes Google Earth to display a 3D model of New York City on which you can map out personalized itineraries."
Bloomberg has been aggressive about promoting tech initiatives during his time in office, from a wind power plan (part of the much bigger "GreeNYC" project) and a city-run venture firm. Under his watch, the Mountain View, Calif.-based Google opened its New York satellite office, taking over several floors of the historic former Port Authority building downtown.

World's biggest software company to preserve the jobs of Americans to the lead of foreigners working on visas.

Microsoft has announced that it will be laying off up to 5000 employees within the 18 months.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer wrote a lengthy letter to all Microsoft employees and e-mailed it to them. In the letter he insists that although the company is financially strong, the profits aren't up to what's been expected so 5,000 jobs have to be cut within 18 months, with 1,400 jobs to be eliminated immediately.

US senator asks Microsoft about job cuts, visas

A U.S. senator has asked Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) about its plans to slash up to 5,000 jobs, urging the world's biggest software company to preserve the jobs of Americans ahead of foreigners working on visas.
"I am concerned that Microsoft will be retaining foreign guest workers rather than similarly qualified American employees when it implements its layoff plan," Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in a Jan. 22 letter.
Microsoft shocked investors on Thursday when it released quarterly results that missed Wall Street expectations, announced up to 5,000 layoffs and said it would no longer give forecasts for the rest of the fiscal year.
The company has been a champion of expanding the H-1B visa program, a temporary visa program that lets American companies and universities hire foreign workers in a category considered by the government to be a "specialty occupation."
Microsoft employs thousands of workers through the program, according to Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee.
A spokeswoman for Microsoft said the company has not yet received the letter, but it would respond to Grassley directly.
The letter asked Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer to provide a breakdown of the jobs to be eliminated, and how many of those are individuals with H-1B visas and how many are Americans. Grassley also wants to know what the breakdown will be when the layoffs are complete.
"Microsoft has a moral obligation to protect these American workers by putting them first during these difficult economic times," Grassley said in the letter, copies of which were provided by his office on Friday.

Erick Schonfeld has reported on TechCrunch.com that to date, Apple has sold 17 million iPhones but even with numbers like that, Apple is not beyond the reach of the faltering economy. Recently, Apple had to lay off 174 folks from its Elk Grove, Calif., campus, according to the Sacramento Bee newspaper, which had its first-ever layoffs last summer.
What interests me is that somewhere there is somebody who takes delight in the news of the employment lost by others. Just read the Soundoff forums for this paper and you'll notice a regular influx of non-well wishers who are thrilled at the thought of no more P-I and don't mind being rather mean about it. I've read scores of "ha-ha on you left-wing freaks" type sentiment and quite scathing remarks directed at the upper management of this newspaper and, frankly, I find it to be rather un-American at this time in history. No doubt there are people doing the secret snicker because Microsoft is laying off and although Ballmer makes my scalp twitch, I will temper my animosity with a huge dose of sympathy for the newly laid-off subexecutives of Microsoft.

Microsoft earnings slump; 5,000 jobs eliminated
Software giant's shares plunge to 11-year low on surprise news.

Microsoft Corp. rattled investors early Thursday by releasing a disappointing quarterly earnings report and announcing that it will lay off as many as 5,000 workers, a startling development for a company that has taken pride in avoiding such sweeping job cuts even during the lowest points of its roughly 33-year history.

Revenue grew slightly to $16.6 billion from $16.4 billion last year. Analysts had been expecting revenue of $17.08 billion.
"We are certainly in the midst of a once-in-a-lifetime set of economic conditions," Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said during a conference call with analysts. "The economy is resetting to a lower level of business and consumer spending."
Shares of Microsoft fell sharply lower, responding to the disappointing financial results, as well as to the abrupt timing of their release. Microsoft had not been expected to post its numbers until after the market's close. The stock fell nearly 12% lower Thursday to close at $17.58, its lowest level since Jan. 1998.
"It's mostly the shock of the early release," analyst Robert Breza of RBC Capital Markets said of the sell-off.
A company representative said news of the results and layoffs were released early so that affected employees could be briefed "face to face" by their managers. An email from Ballmer to employees announcing the cuts was sent out at roughly 6 a.m. in Redmond, Wash., where Microsoft is based.

'The economy is resetting

to a lower level of

business and consumer

spending.'
— Steve Ballmer, Microsoft.

observatoryNANO

Nanoscience and nanotechnology is now a burning science that changes the world of science and technology .concentrate the UK dissemination event for the observatoryNANO in London on the 19th March 2009 and gain knowledge of new nanoscience and nanotechnology developments in different industrial sectors and what socio-economic impacts these are having on the global market.
European decision-makers in government, industry, and finance lack objective information for their decisions when considering a rapidly changing field of technology such as nanoscience and nanotechnology.
The observatoryNANO project aims to address this through extensive engagement with the global expert community to supplement its review of scientific literature, patents, and reports from different organizations and projects. Developments in ten broad technology sectors are being mapped and analyzed: aerospace, automotive, and transport; agrifood; chemistry and materials; construction; energy; environment; health, medicine, and nanobio; ICT; security; and textiles.
This event provides an indication of the work performed within the first year of the project and the chance for participants to meet project partners and get a better insight into how nanotechnology is evolving, not just in terms of scientific, technological and socio-economic opportunities, but also the moral and communal aspects, and the prospective environment, health and safety issues. It also provides a platform for individuals to become involved in future engagement processes and have their opinions included in reports and analyses presented to EU policy makers.

ObservatoryNANO
The FP7 project observatoryNANO is funded for four years and includes 16 partners from 10 European States. Its mission is to create a European Observatory on Nanotechnologies to present reliable, complete and responsible science-based and economic expert analysis, across technology sectors, establish dialogue with decision makers and others regarding the benefits and opportunities, balanced against barriers and risks, and allow them to take action to ensure that scientific and technological developments are realized as socio-economic benefits.
European decision-makers in governments, industry, and finance lack objective information for their decisions when considering a rapidly changing field of technology such as Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (N&N). The observatoryNANO project will help address this issue. It will collate and analyse data regarding scientific and technological (ST) trends (including peer-reviewed publications, patents, roadmaps, published company data) and economic realities and expectations (including market analysis and economic performance, public and private funding strategies). The ST and economic analysis will be further supported by assessment of ethical and societal issues, impacts on health, environment and safety, as well as regulation, standardization, and legislative issues. Although much of this work will be performed within the consortium, observatoryNANO has established liaisons with international organizations including the EPO, OECD, and ISO, and will establish liaisons with relevant European Technology Platforms (ETPs), ERA NETs, and other relevant EU-funded projects, to ensure that effort is not duplicated and that resource sharing and output are maximized. The purpose of this integrated approach is to develop validated methodologies that yield accurate indicators of the socio-economic impact of N&N RTD.

The final goal of the observatoryNANO project is to establish a permanent European Observatory on Nanotechnologies, to provide ongoing, independent support to decision-makers. This will take account of the methodologies developed and validated during the project, the functions and activities of other similar initiatives, and input from a balanced Governing Board of high-level stakeholders that will be formed during the second year of the project.