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Archive for August, 2010

Software trade group spent $160,000 to lobby federal government in second quarter

August 31st, 2010

The Software & Information Industry Association spent $160,000 in the second quarter to lobby the federal government on patent reform efforts, tax matters and education funding, among other issues, according to a quarterly disclosure report.

That compares with $130,000 that the group spent to lobby in the first quarter and in the second quarter of last year.

Other issues that the group lobbied on in the second quarter include immigration issues and H-1B visas and the Federal Communications Commission’s national broadband plan, which lays out a roadmap for bringing high-speed Internet connections to all Americans.

In addition, the Software & Information Industry Association lobbied on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, an international trade agreement that is currently being drafted. Many tech companies warn that the pact could expose Internet access providers, Web search engines and other online businesses to damaging legal risks by holding them responsible for copyright infringement by their users.

Members of the Software & Information Industry Association, which represents software and digital-content companies, include International Business Machines Corp., Symantec Corp., Saleforce.com and Adobe Systems Inc.

The group lobbied Congress, the Department of Education, the Commerce Department, the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Trade Representative and the Federal Communications Commission, among other government agencies, during the second quarter.

Source:-http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/market_news/article.jsp?content=D9HUJV6G4

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Posted in Software News

Tags: Software Trade

IDX Broker software enables thorough search process on Fort Myers realty website

August 31st, 2010

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Tony Price, Owner and Broker-in-Charge of Priceless Realty, has begun to utilize his very own customized IDX solution for his professional website. The IDX, Inc. premier service seamlessly syncs the listings Price represents with the Fort Myers MLS to deliver home seekers around Florida with an informative and efficient database of property listings to search through. Potential buyers can rest assured that by using the website of Price to search for a home, they will be getting the latest market listings and the best customer service available online.

Finding a home online has never been easier, thanks to the IDX solution Price now hosts on his website. Home seekers can even utilize his unique search tools when they are not even online or searching, with the automatic email notification system the website of Price has. When a property matching the requests a potential buyer has outlined becomes listed on Fort Myers MLS, an email alerting home seekers arrives almost instantaneously. The online home search has never been easier or more effortless than it is now on the search page Price supports.

An administrative login page is just another tool Price added to his real estate arsenal when he signed up for IDX Broker software. Here, he can access his clients and their saved search parameters and contact information. These features are even accessible on an iPhone, truly making Price and his real estate business mobile. Conducting business while in the field is only one of the many perks Price gets from adopting his own personalized IDX solution. His dedication to serving his clients is the reason he is so successful and his newly updated professional website reflects that even more.

Source:-http://florida.realestaterama.com/2010/08/31/idx-broker-software-enables-thorough-search-process-on-fort-myers-realty-website-ID0521.html

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Posted in Software News

Tags: IDX Software

IBM names itself worst company for fixing critical software security bugs

August 31st, 2010

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IBM’s security researchers seem to have located the problem. And it is IBM.

Last Wednesday, IBM’s X-Force security research team published its twice-annual study tracking the latest vulnerabilities and new attacks online. The report also ranked software companies according to their record of patching known security vulnerabilities in the software they sell. And the results of that ranking look worst for none other than the tech giant that performed the study.

IBM’s report, when it was first released, seemed to cast an unflattering light on some of the company’s competitors: Sun Microsystems–now owned by Oracle–had left unpatched 24% of all the hackable security flaws in the company’s software that were disclosed this year. When IBM filtered those unpatched security flaws by severity, however, Google came out as the least likely to patch critical security bugs in its software that would allow a hacker to completely hijack a target system, leaving 33% of those high severity flaws unpatched over the first half of the year.

Google, however, didn’t take those findings lightly. Instead, it dug into the report’s methodology and found that IBM had come to its conclusions about Google’s patching rate based on just three software bugs. And the one out of those three bugs that IBM had counted as unpatched, it turned out, wasn’t a bug at all. (The study’s error seems to have been based on the researchers’ confusion of a “stack overflow” and a “stack buffer overflow.” How silly of them.)

Over the last weekend, IBM quietly released revised findings from the study. Sun and Google have both been acquitted of their lax patching charges, and recounting bugs showed that Microsoft had the worst record for patching flaws of all severities over the last six months.

And who held the record for leaving the most high severity software bugs unpatched? IBM. According to its own study, Big Blue left 29% of its critical software flaws from the last six months without a fix, more than any of the other nine companies it measured. Oracle’s numbers were only slightly better: the company failed to fix 22% of its high severity bugs.

Source:http://blogs.forbes.com/andygreenberg/2010/08/31/ibm-names-itself-worst-company-for-fixing-critical-software-security-bugs/?boxes=Homepagechannels

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Tags: IBM security Software

Software makers see a rise in opportunities for attackers

August 31st, 2010

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Software made by Apple, Microsoft and Adobe Systems are the most vulnerable to malware attacks, according to IBM’s X-Force threat report for the first half of this year.In total, the number of disclosed vulnerabilities during the first six months of 2010 increased 36 percent from the first six months of 2009, according to the report.

The IBM X-Force researchers analyzed and documented 4,396 new vulnerabilities reported by software manufacturers in the first half of this year. Apple accounted for 4 percent of all vulnerability disclosures, while Microsoft reported 3.4 percent, according to the report.

Although Apple has more vulnerabilities than Microsoft, it has been targeted less by hackers because there are fewer Mac users than PC users, experts say.Adobe Systems ranked third in disclosed vulnerabilities with 2.4 percent of the disclosures in the first half of 2010 — up from ninth a year earlier — because of problems with Adobe Reader and Flash Player, according to the researchers.However, the list of vendors with the fewest number of patched vulnerabilities was topped by Sun, Microsoft and Mozilla, while Apple took the fourth slot.

On average, 55 percent of the software vulnerabilities reported by vendors went unpatched by those vendors, compared to 52 percent a year earlier, according to the study.

Source:-http://www.technewsdaily.com/software-makers-see-a-rise-in-opportunities-for-attackers-1137/

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Tags: Opportunities Software

H-P ends August with a bang, settling kickback probe for $55 M

August 31st, 2010

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Alas, it’s been a long month for the head honchos out at Hewlett-Packard.

First came the Mark Hurd imbroglio. Then came a 17 percent stock slide for the computer-maker. The latest: the company will pay $55 million to settle allegations that it paid kickbacks to win U.S. government business and other charges related to government contracts. Click here for the WSJ story.

The Justice Department alleged that H-P knowingly paid “influencer fees” to systems-integrator companies in return for recommendations that federal agencies purchase H-P products.

It also alleged that H-P’s 2002 contract with the General Services Administration for computer equipment and software was defectively priced because the company provided incomplete information to contracting officers during negotiations.

H-P denied that it engaged in any illegal conduct. “We believe it is in the best interest of our stakeholders to resolve the matter and move beyond this issue,” it said in a statement Monday.

Meanwhile, H-P continues to keep lawyers busy on another front: its bidding for storage software maker 3Par. H-P and rival Dell Inc. have gone back and forth in raising their bids for the company. H-P is now offering roughly $2 billion for 3Par.

Source:http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/08/31/h-p-ends-august-with-a-bang-settling-kickback-probe-for-55-m/

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Tags: August HP Software

NI introduces the VeriStand 2010 real time testing and simulation software

August 31st, 2010

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National Instruments has released the NI VeriStand 2010, a new version of its real time testing and simulation software. This device provides support for multiple chassis PXI systems and ruggedized options using NI CompactRIO and NI Single-Board RIO hardware deployments thus expanding the capabilities for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) and real-time testing. NI VeriStand 2010 also features connectivity with NI LabVIEW.

“We selected NI VeriStand for our Legacy 500 Iron Bird because of the breadth of functionality the environment provides out of the box, which significantly reduces our development efforts,” said M. A. Pires, testing device development coordinator for Embraer.

NI VeriStand 2010 adds support for reflective memory interfaces to share data between real-time PXI systems for high-performance applications such as iron bird aircraft simulators and electronic systems integration test systems. It can automatically create the reflective memory routings between PXI systems, reducing the potential for development errors and helping engineers quickly get their applications up and running. NI VeriStand 2010 also provides system-level abstraction and user interface capabilities.

“While NI VeriStand provides many of the features necessary for our application, the ability to add functionality using LabVIEW and other software environments helps us customize our simulator to exactly meet our future application needs,” said Guilherme Seelander, software integration senior engineer for Embraer.

Source:http://www.eeherald.com/section/new-products/npg100101697.html

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Tags: Software VeriStand