Innovative Visions

“The defect occurred in the joint design of the battery packs, not because of an internal battery cell problem,” this according to spokespeople from both Lenovo and Sanyo (thanks to Reuters for the clip). Just a quick note to anyone who wasn’t caught up in the large-scale Sony battery recall last year: turn over your ThinkPad and take a look at the part number on that battery. If it is installed in a select few R, T and Z-series ThinkPads and/or has a number of: 92P1131 then please don’t drop it; it may catch on fire. Call Lenovo instead for a replacement.

All the details on both recalls can be found here.

March 11^th (that’s the second Sunday in March) marks daylight savings time this year. This event, normally on the first Sunday in April, is rather important if you use any software coded before 2005. Why? Well, Congress thought it would help us save energy by increasing the process by a month.

Therefore, according to Microsoft, any and all meetings scheduled in Outlook 2003 for March and April should be double-checked and confirmed with the organizer. This is just one example, but be sure to check your software programs and any and all automatically changing clocks for similar glitches. In addition, if you work with anyone located in any other country other than the US and Canada (they had to follow suit), the time differences between zones will be an hour off during this 3-4 week period… i.e. France will be 7 hours and the UK 6 hours ahead of the US East Coast. You can view more specifics behind the legislation and Microsoft’s suggestions here and here, respectively.

Previously, I have discussed the state of our domestic broadband offerings and the danger it poses to future generations’ ability to innovate and compete in the world market. Prices are high for services which are slow… and this is all compared to what you can get in Lithuania! In the process I directed your attention to this piece, written by FCC member Michael J. Copps in last November’s Washington Post which tells the story behind why the US ranks 15^th worldwide in broadband Internet adoption.

Well, here is the next chapter, but this time it directly involves the FCC. Nate Anderson (from ArsTechnica), wrote on Monday about the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) taking the FCC to task in federal court to release their database of Form 477 filings.

“CPI wants the FCC database of Form 477 filings. These documents are filed with the FCC by every telecom company in the US, and they give the agency data on each company’s line deployments, broken down by ZIP code (and generally unaudited by the FCC).”

The FCC is protesting, saying this will reveal confidential competitive information about all carriers and their future plans. Every major telecommunications’ lobbying group agree. However, The CPI may have a good point here. They want to determine, for themselves, how competitive the broadband market really is and need to data to do so.

This is a crucial step in the process to increase competition, thus improving services while decreasing costs to consumers and companies. The problem is that the GAO (the federal agency in charge of internal auditing) has repeatedly chastised the FCC for its inaccurate reporting of actual broadband availability and adoption. However, without these filings, there is no way to hold the broadband providers accountable. If successful, the CPI hopes to publish the data on its telecommunications/technology/media information site.

IV works with all of these carriers on a daily basis and some of our revenue is derived from these partnerships. Why, you ask would be we want to encourage the release of this information? Because not only is widespread broadband adoption necessary, but crucial for the US to remain competitive in the global marketplace. This will help us all! I will say it again: The US is currently ranked 15^th in the world in broadband adoption and will only drop in these standings if competition continues to remain stagnant (with the help of the FCC). Will we be hearing more about this or will it be swept under the rug with a handshake? Thanks to the CPI, I think it might have a chance in the national spotlight.

It happened again. Actually, it happened three months ago and the company (Nationwide) just decided not to report it. What is this again? Oh yeah, during a home break-in three months ago in the U.K., the laptop belonging to an employee of Britain’s largest building society, was stolen with the names and account numbers of 11 million customers on it… 11 million!! Why oh why is this information on that laptop? Are they really that stupid to risk this simple breach in security? I’ve said it over and over again. Please don’t keep your customers’ sensitive information on your laptops or desktops. All of this data should be stored and secured centrally (along with a secure, remote back-up). Not only is this model more efficient, but it’s also secure. That’s the least you could do…

However, most of the outrage and media attention is focused on the amount of time it took to report the theft.

‘”A three-month delay is appalling. People should be able to trust that if a problem has happened they will be told about it straight away.”’

While this lapse in time and judgment is “appalling” it shouldn’t be the major concern in this situation. The CEO of this company was quoted as saying,

“We have tightened up our already high security procedures and this should ensure it couldn’t happen again.”’

Well, why weren’t the proper procedures put in place to start with? He is saying their security procedures were already “tightened”? Come on, Mr. Philip Williamson… Can we really believe that?

Microsoft’s long anticipated release of its next browser is finally coming to fruition around at the turn of the New Year. With it come upgrades in networking, increased multimedia functionality and a couple of other things… nothing which is going to cause you to upgrade from XP until at least the second Service Pack, in my opinion. However, there is one other little change from XP which we should take note of: A change in how their retail licenses can be used. Ed Bott, from ZDNet, has a great summary of these changes.

Here, Bott quotes the License Agreement for Windows Home Basic, Home Premium and Ultimate:

“Before you use the software under a license, you must assign that license to one device (physical hardware system). That device is the “licensed device.”

Now, for some businesses this won’t matter much. But for many consumers (and small businesses) who purchase retail machines loaded with an OEM license of the OS, this little change now means that you can only transfer that purchased license once… that’s it. Previously with Windows XP, you could transfer your OS license as many times as you wanted, as long as you erased the previous instance(s) of XP. With Vista, if you want to transfer an OEM/retail license to another machine (no matter what the reason), you can only do this once before your rights are used up.

Tomorrow morning we’re sending out a very important announcement to our clients about how we can all get some money back from the government this year. Currently the IRS is charging a 3% excise tax on all domestic long distance, cellular and VoIP traffic. This year the Supreme Court ruled against this tax and the IRS will refund companies accordingly for the last 41 months of excise tax.

This is a very good thing and it means that your company will have a larger refund come tax time. However, it isn’t the easiest thing to apply for (of course it isn’t, it’s the IRS!!). This is where Innovative Visions will help. We’ve partnered up with two excellent auditing firms who will analyze and file all documents for you in order to secure your refund and we manage the entire process for you! It costs you nothing up front and then only if you actually receive a refund. Please contact us ASAP for more information as this offer from the government expires on 12/31/2006 (and we’re really, really busy).

Earlier this month the U.S Supreme Court weighed in with its opinion on patent infringement lawsuits. According to Forbes magazine, “The U.S. Supreme Court has tipped the balance in patent disputes ever so slightly toward the users of patented technology and away from inventors, owners of intellectual property and the hated “patent trolls”–companies that make money by suing for infringement of patents they own but don’t use.”

Now what does this have to do with you and your company? Well, if you are an inventor or somehow work with patented technology, then it has an immediate effect on your legal recourse dealing with infringement of your patents (see the Forbes’ article for more detail).

This decision really only has an immediate affect on eBay (the defendant in the related lawsuit), however it will affect most future patent infringement lawsuits and how and if there are court-ordered injunctions involved. As the article goes on to state, ‘the ruling doesn’t rule out any court injunction, but does leave it a bit more open to interpretation by the lower courts as to when an injunction is really necessary’ (when the plaintiff is suffering from irreparable harm, due to the continued use of the patent in question).

However, more far-reaching implications involve your day to day business. Do you and/or your employees and collogues use Blackberries, Treos or computers for that matter in your daily lives? A related matter that has been in the news for the last year or two brings this home to many of us. That is, NTP’s lawsuit for patent infringement against Research in Motion (the maker of Blackberry). RIM avoided an injunction in the end, but had to pony up $612 million to NTP. I had never before seen so many users of the “CrackBerry” freaking out like their soul was being ripped from them. Organizations were calling me to create contingency plans and alternative ways of communicating if and when the court ordered RIM to stop all Blackberry service in the U.S. (In fact, I believe the only reason there wasn’t a court injunction is because of the number of federal employees who use the Blackberry and the federal government’s appeal to the court not to end the service.)

So, does your company have a policy in place defining a plan of action if the Intel chip used in all of your servers is found to infringe upon another company’s patent? Or if your productivity software is shown to include patented features which aren’t owned by Microsoft? Scary stuff, I know… (the possibility of having to shut down your business for outside reasons, not the fact that Microsoft doesn’t already own everything.) Well, at least for now, the Supreme Court has given you a bit more time to create a plan. Their decision doesn’t take away the possibility of an injunction, but merely makes it harder for a patent-trolling company to request one successfully and this will allow you to seek alternative processes and products.

NPR’s Marketplace aired a broadcast on May 2^nd discussing corporations’ security, theft issues and the measures being taken (or not). http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/05/02/PM200605024.html The report was fairly thorough in nature, but neglected to expand any more on some of the measures which can be taken to properly secure company and customer data, much less the full costs associated with these thefts.

In the report they discuss the magnitude of this problem:

“About 18,000 Bank of America customers got a memo back in May saying their Social Security numbers were on a laptop stolen out of an employee’s car. That same month a laptop was stolen from a branch of Omega World Travel, containing the credit card info of 80,000 Department of Justice workers. Not to be outdone, Bank of America had another laptop stolen in August. In November, 161,000 Boeing employees were told that a laptop containing their Social Security numbers was lifted. Geddit? Boeing? Lifted? In February, Ernst and Young was hit. In March it was Fidelity. As I was writing this paragraph, Boeing called again to say that, since we talked, another laptop was grabbed away from an HR rep at an airport. We’re talking, at least, 14 different companies, three state governmental agencies, five hospitals and nine colleges and universities.”

But they only briefly discuss one of the main issues at hand. Can any company or person ever guarantee sensitive information will not be compromised? Of course not. But there are some very basic steps which can be taken now to seriously impede those trying to capture social security numbers, credit card numbers, health records, etc. From the story, “…(Jonathan Zittrain, a co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School) says there are pretty sure-fire ways to protect sensitive information. Like, encrypting it, or leaving the data on the main server and remotely tunneling through the Internet to work with it.”

The ability to store sensitive information on centrally managed (and protected) servers is really quite basic these days; not to mention a critical part of your security policy (one of many great resources with more information is the SANS project: http://www.sans.org/resources/policies/).With secured and encrypted wireless connections, SSL VPN tunnels and the ability to update, store and back up remotely over the WAN, why is there still sensitive information being stored on company/personal laptops or being transported on tapes by anyone other than Wells Fargo?

Marketplace aired a follow-up interview with the CEO of a major healthcare provider on May 11^th. He and his company have won awards for how they’ve dealt with the theft of information; after the fact. They have also lobbied heavily with Congress in order to change the laws by which companies have to adhere in order to notify customers of information theft. “At the moment, Congress is considering a few bills that would require companies to do what McIntyre did: Notify customers in the event of a security breach.” http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/05/11/PM200605115.html

But what about prevention? These laws are still vague in nature. Please remember that as a company responsible for the security of your customers’ confidential information you cannot wait and be reactive to this problem. The legal and financial costs are far too great to ignore. This is a problem which has to be dealt with proactively for it to be at least mildly effective.