Rational at the Rational User Conference 2002 in Orlando, Fla. this week plans to extend its support of UML application modeling to development of applications based on Microsoft's Visual Basic.Net and ASP.Net (Active Server Pages) platforms, according to Rational. The Rational Extended Development Environment (XDE) will be able to support these Microsoft platforms in Rational XDE Professional Version 2002 R2. UML models provide an industry standard notation for visualizing the design of an application, said Rational's Roger Oberg, vice president of product marketing at Rational, in Lexington, Mass.
"Developers using Visual Studio .Net who have Rational XDE [can] now continue to do the round-trip engineering that they had for C# in the XDE environment," Oberg said. Round trip engineering is the ability to design using UML models and associate that to generate code in C# or Visual Basic and reverse-engineer as well, Oberg said.
For those who thought the biggest consumer trends this fall would be the latest 10-in-one kitchen gadget or a new line of flashy athletic shoes, Microsoft and its partners have some other options:
- Online video games that can be played on the biggest-of-big-screen TVs -- instead of a PC -- while lounging in the living-room comfy chair
- An Internet Service Provider refined to deliver an increasingly customized, youthful Web experience
- A media player for your PC that offers better sound and more tools for creating, delivering and playing music, video and other media
- Technology that transforms the PC into a home-entertainment center
- A handheld device that lets you order pizza by phone and invite friends over with an e-mail for dinner
A flaw has been discovered in the newest version of the Apache Web server that could allow an attacker to take control of a user's system, prompting the release Friday of an upgrade to the software. PivX Solutions, a network security consultancy in Newport Beach, California, disclosed the vulnerability Friday soon after an upgrade to Apache Version 2.0 that fixes the hole was made available on the Web. The hole could allow an attacker to remotely access all the files on an Apache 2.0 Web server, execute them, pass malicious code, and even shut down the system completely, said Geoff Shively, who goes by the title "chief hacking officer" at PivX Solutions.
"This is the same type of vulnerability that made Code Red, Code Blue and Nimda possible," Shively said. "If someone wanted to make a worm for this it would take the same route."
I spent the last four days at the annual Microsoft Tech-Ed conference, along with 1 300 other eager developers from around the country and the continent. Having attended last year's event, I was fully prepared for the marketing hype and the all-too-common platitudes about how great the company is. What I wasn't prepared for was the subtle winds of change that seem to have blown through the company since last year.
Clearly the company is starting to embrace a more open way of operation. There was more talk this year of open standards than at any other Microsoft function I have ever attended. Of course, it stops miles short of embracing the open source model, but the willingness to co-operate with other companies and software is clearly there. 2002's Tech-Ed had a whole new style: it was open to discussion, actually mentioned working with competitors and put developers at the heart of what was on offer. The message was clear: Visual Studio, .Net and the likes are for developers. It is a tool for them to create what they want to create and how they want to create it. But more importantly, it is no longer a Microsoft-only world and developers will have to, and can, work with other systems.
Meeting a Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) requirement that publicly-held companies have their chief executives sign off on financial statements, AOL Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons was forced this week to admit that the company probably inflated revenues by almost $50 million over the past 18 months. Executives say that they are now aware of three suspicious transactions that might have resulted in earnings overstatements for America Online (AOL), the online division of AOL Time Warner. They also admitted that further investigation into the company's books might reveal other problems. You know, I'm watching this company just fall apart all over the place, and it's hard to believe that the merger between AOL and Time Warner was even allowed in the first place. Corporate executives have been cooking the books for decades, but where was the federal oversight when these two companies were given the OK? Maybe it's time to turn the current round of corporate investigations towards the government entities that signed off on this deal.
Sun roiled the competitive waters of the Linux world this week. In the view of some users and developers attending this week's LinuxWorld Conference & Expo, only takes the Linux wars from the kernel or Linux operating system level up to the platform or environment level. At this level, Sun will putting its stack up against those of IBM, Red Hat, and Hewlett-Packard.
"It's nice to see McNealy's personal commitment to Linux, but Sun is rather late getting into the [Linux] game. And given the [company's] laser-like focus on its own products, I have to be thinking this integrateable stack may cause more incompatibility problems than [it] cures, which could cause a technology rift in the community," said John McIntyre, chief security officer with a large San Francisco-based financial services company.
Microsoft has moved closer to commercialization of a wireless keyboard and mouse set that relies on Bluetooth wireless networking technology. The Redmond, Wash., software maker, which has been slow off the mark in adding support for Bluetooth to its Windows operating systems, received approval for the product from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this month, according to FCC documents.
The keyboard and mouse will come in a kit that also contains a Bluetooth transceiver that can be connected to a personal computer using the USB (universal serial bus) connector. Because the keyboard and mouse won't be able to draw power from the PC, they each require two batteries to operate.
More details of Samsung Electronics' planned mobile telephone based on Microsoft's Windows-Powered Smartphone 2002 platform are out after the telephone received approval from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Features of the model, according to documents submitted by Samsung, include dual LCD panels, a main one inside the telephone and a smaller panel on the outside that can be used to display information, for example the number of the person calling, while the handset is closed.
It also had an infrared port and a Secure Digital (SD) memory card slot which also supports the SD IO standard extension peripherals, such as digital cameras or Bluetooth modules. The handset will support, the documents said, both e-mail and SMS (short message service) and users can chose from one of three ways to input text: a numeric mode, the T9 system or multipress, in which keys are pressed between one and several times to get the desired letter.
Consumers spent $4.6 billion on Digital Video Discs (DVDs) last year - more than twice as much as they did in 2000 - beating out VHS cassette sales for the first time. DVDs sold spectacularly even though VCRs are in four times as many households as DVD players. Some chain stores, such as Circuit City and Borders, expect this trend to continue and are replacing their VHS inventories with DVDs. If this sounds familiar, it may be because the VHS format itself had trounced its rival, Beta, in the mid to late 1970s.
Theories can gain a life of their own even when facts do not support them. During the 1990s, lock-in theory was cited in several antitrust cases brought against companies such as American Airlines, MasterCard, and Visa. In 2000, U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson found that Microsoft violated antitrust laws because "positive feedback loops" (i.e., lock-in) kept the company's rivals from effectively
competing in the market for personal computer (PC) operating systems (OS). True, Microsoft holds the dominant share of the market for operating systems. But this does not mean that Windows is any less immune to competition than VHS is from DVDs.
In September, Microsoft will begin beta testing the third service pack for SQL Server 2000 and has opened registration for a limited number of outside participants. SP3 will feature numerous security and bug fixes Microsoft has issued since the release of SP2 last November. Microsoft notes that applying to participate does not guarantee placement in the beta test. Testers are also reminded that the service pack may contain bugs and is not recommended for production use. To apply for the SQL Server 2000 SP3 beta test, visit the SP3 beta page and fill out a survey. Current Microsoft beta testers should enter their Beta ID in the registration form, new testers are asked to use a Beta ID of 0.