Technology System Integrator is an efficient, reliable technical support service in New York. We offer a wide range of computer solutions customized to your personal and business needs. Our technicians come prepared with the necessary tools, parts, and products to successfully resolve the problem onsite at your business.

Toll Free: (800) 214-1874 | Office: (212) 937-7874

Desktop on-site and off- site support TSI Solutions provide full LAN/WAN desktop support for our client’s home and businesses offices

TSI Tech Supportyour source for IT solutions, we focus solely on enhancing our client's Technology with the following services: Hosted VOIP Business Phone Services, Networking Design, Application Development, Tech Support, Help Desk, Network Support, Computer Repair Services, Network Security, Managed Network and all other technology needs.

TSI Tech Support, Computer Management Support, NYC, NY, New York City,

Helping organizations across all industry to achieve their business goals and objectives by lowering the cost and maximizing the performance of their information technology systems.
Please use a update version of Internet Explorer or Firefox

TSI Tech Support specializes in the design, configuration, implementation of computer networks, We also offer managed network computer services: full IT Support Management of local and wide area Computer Network (LAN/WAN) solutions.

* Our staff have the Technical experience

TSI Tech Support We bring to each project insights and knowledge that has been gained from our over 28 years of working in the Computer Information Technology industry.

Ø Remote Monitoring / Maintenance Ø Multi-location Computer Support Ø Virus, Spyware and Malware Removal and Repair Ø Software and Hardware Installations Ø Virtual Private Network Ø Microsoft Exchange Servers Ø Black Berry Enterprise Server Ø UNIX / Linux Web, File and Mail Servers Ø Troubleshoot of Hardware and Software issues Ø Business Leasing of all hardware’s Ø Network Strategy Ø Security Assessments Ø Cost Analysis Ø LAN/WAN Infrastructure Ø Desktop and Server Support Specialists for MACs and PCs

www.tsintegrator.com / 252 West 38 Street, Suite 505 New York, NY 10018 / (800) 214-1874

 Technology System Integrator your source for IT solutions, we focus solely on embracing our client's with the following services, Business Phone Services, Networking Design, Application Development, Tech Support, Help Desk, Network Support, Computer  Repair Services, Network Security, Managed Network and  all other technology needs.

Helping organizations across all industry to achieve their business goals and objectives by lowering the cost and maximizing the performance of their information technology systems.

TSI Tech Supportyour source for IT solutions, we focus solely on enhancing our client's Technology with the following services: Hosted VOIP Business Phone Services, Networking Design, Application Development, Tech Support, Help Desk, Network Support, Computer Repair Services, Network Security, Managed Network and all other technology needs.

TSI Tech Support, Computer Management Support, NYC, NY, New York City,

Helping organizations across all industry to achieve their business goals and objectives by lowering the cost and maximizing the performance of their information technology systems.
Please use a update version of Internet Explorer or Firefox

TSI Tech Support specializes in the design, configuration, implementation of computer networks, We also offer managed network computer services: full IT Support Management of local and wide area Computer Network (LAN/WAN) solutions.

* Our staff have the Technical experience

TSI Tech Support We bring to each project insights and knowledge that has been gained from our over 28 years of working in the Computer Information Technology industry.

 Technology System  Integrator TSI assists design, implementation and support of our client's technology programs. Our clients range from small single building entities to large county based systems interconnected by wide-area Network connections.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

Microsoft reached a surprising milestone this week. In a routine court filing, the U.S. Justice Department and handful of attorneys generals asserted that Microsoft's communications protocol disclosure is "substantially complete." Finally. The Microsoft that once beat Netscape senseless had finally bowed before the great government overlord. Perhaps for good reason. There's a new sheriff in town, looking for bad guys to jail.

The Obama Administration appears ready to legally take on dominant companies in a way the Bush Administration simply wouldn't. In May, the Wall Street Journal claimed that the Obama Administration had put together an antitrust watchlist, on which there is Google's name, among others.

About a month after her appointment to head the Justice Department's antitrust division, Christine Varney set the new enforcement tone. "Americans have seen firms given room to run with the idea that markets 'self-police,' and that enforcement authorities should wait for the markets to 'self-correct,'" she told members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in May. "It is clear to anyone who picks up a newspaper or watches the evening news that the country has been waiting for this 'self-correction,' spurred innovation and enhanced consumer welfare. But these developments have not occurred. Instead, we now see numerous markets distorted."

Varney emphasized: "The Antitrust Division must step forward and take a leading role in the development of the Government's multi-faceted response to the current market conditions. Vigorous antitrust enforcement action under Section 2 of the Sherman Act will be part of the Division's critical contribution to this response."

Microsoft Seeks Safety in Oversight

Either the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission can take jurisdiction over a prosecution depending on circumstances. The Justice Department, along with 20 states (originally), brought the landmark antitrust case against Microsoft in May 1998. Three years later, the FTC investigated and later settled with Microsoft, regarding Passport authentication privacy and security.

In the case of Intel, the FTC is leading the investigation. FTC subpoenaed Intel in June 2009 and by December had expanded the investigation to include the chip giant's nVidia disputes. In May, the European Union's Competition Commission found that Intel had violated antitrust laws on the Continent, fining the company $1.45 billion. It's perhaps no coincidence that the FTC subpoena came a month later. In her May speech, Varney made clear there would be closer coordination between U.S. enforcers and their European counterparts.

Microsoft may be the only dominant high-tech company outside the periphery of increased antitrust enforcement. Microsoft's government oversight was to end in November 2007, but the judge imposed a two-year extension. Google helped the decision, by filing a complaint about Windows search that led to voluntary changes by Microsoft. In April 2009, the Justice Department, Microsoft and settling states filed a motion to further extend oversight, which U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly granted. Microsoft's oversight continues through May 2011, unless extended again.

The first question to ask: Why would Microsoft so easily agree to another 18 months of oversight? The answer is another question: Why not? If the Obama Administration is going to step up antitrust enforcement, the safest place for Microsoft is existing oversight. Microsoft is a problem solved, from the Obama Administration's perspective.

Stalking the Wild Google

The three most obvious dominant U.S. high-tech companies are Google, Intel and Microsoft. All could be classified as monopolies -- and this is where I point out that being a monopoly isn't illegal in the United States. It's the abuse of monopoly power that normally concerns antitrust enforcers. Intel is an animal cornered by the FTC. Microsoft is the beast caged by the Justice Department. By comparison, Google is fair game. It's open season, and the Obama Administration is on the hunt. For the hunters, an over-dominant Google could be seen as disrupting the food chain. That Google would have to be caged, too. Or killed.

Google's search dominance is indisputable, with worldwide search share around 60 percent, according to combined analysts data, but much higher in some countries. Google is hugely influential over the Web, particularly when it comes to utility of search and the economy around keywords. But Google's influence stretches farther.

In the strangest of coincidences, today at ZDNet, Doug Hanchard posted blog: "DOJ vs. Google: Will it happen? Unlikely -- as government would lose." I planned to write the post you are reading much earlier in the day, but personal matters delayed finishing the writing. So I'm in the disappointing position of appearing to respond to Hanchard, which isn't the case. But since he posted first, I'll say that he's probably wrong. An Obama Administration could win against Google, which is dominant in search and advertising -- and something more, often overlooked.

The Google economy disrupts many established companies that sell goods or services that the search/information giant gives away for free. The dispute some newspapers and media mogul Rupert Murdoch have with Google is really about the free economy. Will the more regulatory inclined Obama Justice Department view this disruption as anticompetitive?

The High Price of Free

U.S. antitrust law is particularly hard on price fixing, which usually takes place between two or more companies. Classic example would be airlines agreeing to set prices, thus negating the price fluidity caused by competition and bringing harm to consumers. Google fixes prices for many services at zero, and this is for stuff other companies charge for. Is that anticompetitive?

I wouldn't say so, but I'm no lawyer. But I have closely followed Microsoft court cases for more than a decade -- and learned something about antitrust law along the way. Pricing certainly was an issue in Microsoft's U.S. antitrust case. The company gave away for free Internet Explorer and bundled it for free with Windows. Netscape charged for its browser, but later was compelled to give away the software. U.S. trustbusters argued that Microsoft used its Windows dominance to push into an adjacent market, with IE's free cost and Windows bundling being two tactics.

The Clinton Justice Department had a tough time making pricing and adjacent market arguments stick, but ultimately convinced the judge of something more pressing for his remedy: That together, Office and Windows created an "applications barrier to entry" for competing products. Google may be vulnerable, too. For example: Google search bundling with Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari and Google's own Chrome. An aggressive Justice Department could argue that the company's dominance in search and, related, advertising create barriers to competition for other products.

Google is standing pretty much where Microsoft did 11 years ago. The Clinton Administration prosecuted Microsoft for fear the company would otherwise become gatekeeper to the Internet. The Obama Administration could easily act against Google from the same fear.

Microsoft's past sins give it some protection from Obama's antitrust hunters. As previously stated, Microsoft is caged. Google is game. I know, I know, guns and liberals are supposed to be oil and water. Not back home in Maine. My dad hunted bear and deer, and he voted Democrat. Would he shoot a Google? If it had antlers, absolutely.

Technology System Integrator. 2009

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

After Sony debuted the slimmer, cheaper PlayStation 3 in September, the formerly "too expensive" home video game console enjoyed an explosion in sales. At the $299 price point, it quickly went from the slowest-selling console to the fastest. NPD Group statistics are now showing that sales cooled off slightly in November, and PlayStation 3 receded to second place (710,400 units) behind Microsoft's Xbox 360 (819,500 units).

Though sales may have relaxed after the initial surge, market research company iSuppli says the 120 GB PlayStation 3 slim has brought Sony closer to the "breakeven point." Each unit sold still loses money for Sony, but because of the revised bill of materials in the new design, Sony is losing less, and that's something.

After all, the console has been selling at a loss to Sony for its entire life. After the device launched in 2006, iSuppli determined that Sony was losing between $241 and $307 for each unit sold depending on the hardware configuration.

"However, with each new revision of the game console hardware, Sony has aggressively designed out costs to reach the hardware and manufacturing breakeven point as quickly as possible," said iSuppli analyst Andrew Rossweiler.

The firm's last count put Sony at a $49.72 loss per unit sold.

In its most recent teardown analysis, iSuppli determined that Sony has shrunk that loss even further to $31.27 per unit. The entire bill of materials adds up to $336.27, thanks to a lower wattage power supply, more energy efficient chips and fewer components.

Technology System Integrator. 2009

By Mary Kay Roberto, E-Commerce Times

For years, IT departments have had full control over their own infrastructure -- for better and worse -- and are naturally uncomfortable with anything that prevents them from being the sole resource for their own infrastructure. They have been trained to maintain tight control because of the complexity of their own environment -- a positive trait that has helped to assure timely and accurate delivery, but limits their ability to accept change.

It should come as no surprise, then, that IT often views data leaving its network as a negative rather than a positive. However, Software as a Service cost-savings and the ability to help companies foster innovation within their own infrastructure is too strong a value proposition for most enterprises to ignore. Although management may be pushing cloud initiatives on reticent IT staff, many chief information security officers (CISOs) and chief technology officers (CTOs) are wary of the hype and have nagging fears about the loss of infrastructure control, loss of ownership of data, vendor lock-in and data security.

These fears are largely rooted in false perceptions about loss of control and security -- and in false beliefs in the flexibility and strength of on-premise solutions. The key to avoiding these potential pitfalls is to thoroughly evaluate your SaaS partner. Like any other industry that achieved popularity quickly, there are many companies that are slapping "cloud computing" stickers on their products and positioning them as brand new.

Enterprises need to delve into the details of their partners' operations, software and license agreements to ensure they are aligning themselves with a company taking advantage of modern technology and protocols, so none of their fears come to pass.

1. Loss of infrastructure control

This is a problem perpetuated by managed service providers during the 1990s, when businesses would move from on-premise solutions to managed services. Back then, some managed service providers could not provide an environment in which they could deliver timely or reactive support or functionality, thus frustrating the end-users.

The sophistication of technology today has allowed the industry to move away from this unwanted scenario and provide the best of both worlds: The administrator retains the granularity and control that is provided by an on-premise solution while still getting timely support.

That said, all vendor infrastructures are not equal. Enterprises should fully understand the infrastructure of a vendor's SaaS-based solution and ensure there are no single points of failure, such as those found in the recent T-Mobile data fiasco.

A key attribute enterprises can look for in cloud partners is whether or not they use a grid computing system and, if so, how they define "grid computing." Grid computing is a proven method for achieving 99.999 percent reliability. That's because in the event of an outage or corruption, these networks are able to shift data burdens to alternate locations or across shared multiple locations rather than creating single points of failure.

Instead of causing an informational bottleneck, data is simply accessed from another part of the grid until the problem is fixed. Rich SaaS implementations are every bit as powerful as on-premise solutions and allow the administrator to maintain control of the application without dealing with the environmental requirements.

2. Loss of ownership of data

This ties into the first fear because it deals with IT being uncomfortable with data that is not on its own infrastructure. This fear is a valid concern, as data is generally processed or held offsite by cloud vendors; however, on-premise providers often lock customers into solutions by making any migration or upgrade path both cost-prohibitive and technically undoable.

Enterprises need to ensure that data ownership is addressed in detail in the cloud licensing agreement or terms and conditions. Reputable SaaS vendors will ensure that companies always own their data, that it is not provided to anyone else or used for the benefit of the service provider, and that companies are able to easily access their information whenever they need it and get it back, however large the volume, should the partnership not work out.

Systems based on modern technology provide enterprises with a robust administration console that allows you to set all data policies, review access information, control data users and freely interact with data. If a SaaS company cannot guarantee these types of capabilities, enterprises should be wary of partnering with them. Also, enterprises should research the company's partners, press clippings and case studies to get an idea of what industries its solutions are best suited for and how it works with clients.

3. Vendor lock-in

SaaS solutions can lock customers into their products by using proprietary formats for encryption and data storage that make future migration difficult. But guess what? So do on-premise vendors.

This is a long-standing IT problem that goes back well before the cloud. The reality is that cloud vendors make access to data easier and allow customers to export data as is, and when required.

4: Data security

Data security is an excuse that has underpinned the cloud skeptic's position since the introduction of cloud computing or SaaS solutions. Issues such as the potential for multitenant systems to cross-contaminate data and allow a breach have made the rounds -- but have no grounds in reality.

This mindset does not take into account that a cloud vendor is a security provider. Cloud vendors can build security and resilience into their solutions from the ground up and are able to provide massively more security and resilience to their customers than would ever be possible with an on-premise solution.

Encryption and data loss prevention capabilities are a given for SaaS vendors, but there are a few additional areas companies can look into to ensure their potential partners are secure:

• the security policies for data in flight, in use and at rest;
• the physical security practices the company employs for its servers; and,
• the process by which data is shared with separate clients (to learn more about cross-contamination possibilities).

In reality, it is the CTOs and CISOs that are generally pushing for the adoption of cloud-based solutions because they are technical users and decision makers who understand the concepts and architecture of the cloud. As with any technology with a ton of hype, sometimes they are not able to filter through the rhetoric generated by skeptics and those afraid to make a change to the status quo.

Methodical evaluations of SaaS vendors can go a long way toward alleviating these fears and ensuring their cloud computing projects are successful.

These four fears often overshadow the one true SaaS benefit for CISOs and CTOs: namely, transforming the IT department from a help desk to a competitive differentiator.

This story was originally published on E-Commerce Times.

Technology System Integrator. 2009

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

What does it mean to have a "right to privacy?" We have a right to vote, and too few of us use it. I heard it explained to me once, a human right is like a vegetable garden. You have to nurture it, take care of it, and harvest it. Otherwise you have a plot of dirt.

The Internet is not like a vegetable garden. Perhaps that test is appropriate, then, for lawmakers worldwide considering whether the "right to Internet access" follows from the right to free speech -- there are places in the world where is this actively being considered. If a person is denied access to the Internet, the argument goes, her free speech rights are being violated, or at least abridged.

By that same logic, the extent to which one makes use of the Internet, must therefore abridge that person's own right to privacy. At least, by that same logic.

"I think judgment matters..."

Quite a bit has been said about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's comment, in a recent interview with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo for a documentary, that if an Internet user truly expects privacy, then he should consider whether there's something about himself that he doesn't want the world to know.

Perhaps just as important as Schmidt's response was Bartiromo's question, which often gets cut out of the excerpt: "People are treating Google like their most trusted friend. Should they be?"

"Well, I think judgment matters," Schmidt responded. "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place. But if you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines, including Google, do retain this information for some time. And it's important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act. It is possible that that information could be made available to the authorities."

Now, if I were a psychologist, or even if I played one on TV, I could write a field manual on this single paragraph. It's amazing what associations can tell you about the way one's mind works; and Google is, after all, in the business of making associations -- literally, creating contexts and selling ad space on them. Schmidt's second and third sentences imply that his company retains information on what people shouldn't be doing. And Schmidt's third and fourth sentences imply that Google is bound by law to opening up that treasure trove to law enforcement.

The question was, should people trust you? And the answer was, hey lady, I could turn you over to the cops at any time.

Somewhere within the PR department of Google, a hundred heads simultaneously sank.

The sad truth is, we really don't know the extent to which Google or Bing or Facebook or Twitter retains information about its users for any length of time. But if there truly were some type of conspiracy to construct a data mine that plows into the individual privacy rights of billions, it would require a collective resource called intelligence, the abundance of which is contra-indicated by available evidence. It would require the type of concerted effort, thoughtful engineering, and unadulterated ingenuity with which the Internet itself has never been blessed.

The Internet, for lack of a more poetic description, happened. Most of its technology just fell into place, like the result of a classic game of "52-Pickup." The opportunities were there for every Web connection to be encrypted, for every transaction to be certified, for each individual to specify the extent to which she wants her personal information to be utilized -- or not -- and for servers to comply. The specifications were written, and the proposals were made. Google "HTTP-Next Generation" (HTTP-NG) sometime and see what you find.

So why didn't it get done?

The typical response is, because somebody -- often somebody specific -- failed to care enough to see the project through. When big problems culminate in colossal failures, step one in the process is typically to assign blame. Earlier this week, after the embarrassing revelation of information in sensitive TSA documents not having been properly redacted, the Dept. of Homeland Security immediately responded by saying it is tightening its noose around who's to blame. And that should make us all feel better. But in the back of our minds, we know that noose needs to be made wider, not narrower.

The most prominent failure of policy, whether it be in a government or a computer network, is its failure to exist. When there are no rules to be followed, what ends up happening is typically some well-meaning person's best attempt at a solution. That's probably the case with respect to the TSA worker who could not delete the text in the PDF document because his old version of Acrobat didn't let him, so he just blacked it out with a rectangle.

It's probably a very similar case with respect to the architecture of the Internet as a whole. The multitude of privacy violations that take place every day to thousands of individuals whose names aren't "Transportation Safety Administration," are not the fault of one person upstream someplace who failed to click the right button. We -- as in the oversized first word in the US Constitution, "We" -- have failed to work this problem out. Instead, we're trusting someone else to do the job for us.

"People are treating Google like their most trusted friend," asked Maria Bartiromo so poignantly. "Should they be?"

"Get over it."

The Internet was not originally designed to be a communications system. Back in the late 1960s, DARPA's engineers were not looking to replace the telephone with something digital. What they designed was a network of dynamic, switchable routes that connect terminals in one place to databases in another. The Internet was, and is, a networked database.

Like any database, what it gives us is a function of what we give it. Data in, data out. And yes, I'm sounding like Scott McNealy, when he told a JavaOne conference in 1999, "You have no privacy. Get over it." But if McNealy was speaking on behalf of his database -- which, indeed, he was -- then it seems sensible to say that a database isn't going to give you something that you don't give it. Something intangible such as, say, privacy.

To make the database give someone else less than what you give it, there needs to be policies. There needs to be a system in place that enables individuals to specify, first of all, the information that belongs to them. That system needs to enable individuals to specify who can use that information, and who cannot.

But that system will not be given to us. It will not be bestowed upon us, like a human right.

Next: "Give us our privacy!"

"Give us our privacy!"

Two years ago, after Facebook established a service called Beacon that shared users' behavioral data with partners, a multitude of Facebook users started an uproar, in their own way. One of the countless groups that sprang in Beacon's wake was called, "Petition to tell Facebook, give us our privacy!" Its founder wrote, "The second goal of this group is to tell Facebook that we do not want them watching what we do online. What are we all, terrorist suspects; and what is Facebook? The CIA? We deserve to have our privacy. It's a right given to us in the US Constitution."

Actually...no, it's not. The Fourth Amendment grants citizens the right to be protected from unwarranted search and seizure; and the Ninth Amendment states there are other rights too numerous to mention in the Constitution. Judges have interpreted the Fourth and Ninth Amendments as coalescing into something they call the expectation of privacy. That is to say, there are situations where a reasonable citizen should expect to be reasonably private. But as judges interpret it, that expectation rarely arises, or is at least diminished, in public places.

If we think of the Internet as a database, then there's the technical feasibility of policies put in place to restrict information access. But the more we characterize the Internet as a public place -- as a community of 350 million users, like Facebook -- the less likely it will be perceived as a source from which all privacy flows.

Facebook's privacy policy changes were rolled out yesterday. And if users follow Facebook's gentle and friendly instructions as to how to go about implementing those changes -- as the ACLU and the EFF correctly pointed out this week -- those users will merrily flip their privacy controls off. Because "Off" -- or as Facebook calls it, "Everyone" -- is now not only the default setting, but the "Recommended" one.

The ACLU's campaign to compel services including Facebook to improve and observe their own privacy policies, is called Demand Your dotRights - Privacy 2.0. Here's how the ACLU explains the portion of the campaign that deals with social networking: "Social networking sites are an amazing way to connect with friends and family. But the information that these sites collect about you -- not just what's on your profile but also the records of everything you do on the site -- says a lot about your interests, habits, beliefs, and concerns. And outdated privacy laws, written before the Internet even existed, mean that even when you think your profile is 'private,' it isn't private to the government. Don't pay for social networking by giving up control of your personal information. Demand a privacy upgrade. Demand your dotRights."

The ACLU's concern is very reasonable: It's not that Facebook or Google could potentially share your photo or address or phone number with someone on your "Do Not Share" list. It's that aggregators and data miners (the real subject of Facebook's latest policy changes, made more prominent by their absence of reference) are actually encouraged, as part of the business model, to make use of that data collectively, to determine how we live, how we eat, and maybe when it is we use the bathroom.

The most poignantly ironic element of the ACLU's paragraph above is the phrase, "Don't pay for social networking." Because we already don't.

"Privacy is a basic human need"

In response to Schmidt's comment to CNBC, security technologist Bruce Schneier cited an essay he wrote in 2006. In it, he wrote, "Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance. We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need."

Quite arguable, especially if we phrase it like Schneier -- as a need rather than a right. But in that light, Twitter also tapped into another primal human need: to announce the events of our lives. As Twitter described itself from the very beginning, it's "a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing?"

And we know that the guy in the Verizon ad who's sitting on his back patio and Twittering, "I'm...sitting...on...the patio..." is not at all exactly unique.

The right to privacy is in contest with the "basic human need," to borrow Schneier's phrase, to broadcast one's events to the world. And as long as the latter wins out, the ability and the inclination will be there for companies to make use of the data we're spilling out in buckets, in aggregate form. For as long as we tell the world what we're watching on TV or eating for lunch or where we're seated, but we refrain from telling when we're in the bathroom or making love, simple deduction will lead some algorithm somewhere to the inevitable conclusions inferred from the information we refrain from providing. It's what legal scholars would call the "fruit of the tree."

Privacy is not something that Facebook or Twitter or the ACLU will give us. It is something we have to nurture, cultivate, and build for ourselves. We as Internet users seriously need to revisit the idea of globally relevant identification -- digital certificates that identify us to Google and Facebook and Betanews and our mother-in-law's blog. Such tools would cost us a bit of our cherished right to anonymity (something else not guaranteed by the Constitution), but it would enable us to start guaranteeing our own privacy, building policies for databases that state up front what data belongs to us and what data does not, and disabling the ability for any service we designate to maintain copies of our data.

If we really want privacy, just like every other right, we're the ones who need to build it and to use it. Otherwise -- especially out here on the Internet -- it will die.

The opinions expressed here are those of Scott M. Fulton, III, who is solely responsible for his content.

Technology System Integrator. 2009

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

I disagree with Mark Anderson, writer of the Strategic News Service, about Microsoft's future. Last night, at his 10th annual "Predictions Dinner," Anderson asserted that in 2010 Microsoft would lose "its consumer play. Specifically, "except for gaming, it is game over for [Microsoft] in consumer. This will make consumer the place to be, where the most robust and exciting change artists will work." His prediction isn't the future. It's the past.

Microsoft has been retreating from the consumer market for some time, following a deliberate strategy that is creating a circa-1980s IBM. Two days ago, I blogged about how Apple applies what I call "David Thinking" to challenge the status quo. Apple plays off its strengths to change the rules. By comparison, Microsoft is using its strengths to preserve the status quo, isolating the company to the enterprise. I've written about this IBM-transformation many times. In context of Anderson's prediction, it's good time to again explain Microsoft's consumer-losing strategy.

He Who Controls the Standards

Microsoft has abandoned the fundamental principles that made it the most successful software company of the last two decades and ensured its software would be the most widely used everywhere. The company established Windows as a technology platform that became the standard around which developers and other partners supported products. In the early days, Microsoft's approach was one of necessity: Maintaining standards compatibility with the IBM PC.

Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates understood early on the importance of controlling standards and also file formats. In the early 1980s, Gates put Charles Simonyi in charge of productivity applications development. Early work done by the father of Microsoft Office achieved two important goals by the mid 1990s:

• Established format standards that resolved problems sharing documents created by disparate products.
• Ensured that Microsoft file formats would become the adopted desktop productivity standards.

Format lock-in helped drive Office sales throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s -- and Windows along with it. Businesses needed Office to share documents and to maintain backwards compatibility with a growing amount of their valuable information being stored in Microsoft file formats. But even as Microsoft standards drove sales, a new standards threat had developed.

In May 1995, Gates penned the "Internet Tidal Wave" memo that warned about the extended network's threats to Microsoft. In the memo, he specifically identified HTML, HTTP and TCP/IP. "Browsing the Web, you find almost no Microsoft file formats," Gates wrote. He observed not seeing a single Microsoft file format "after 10 hours of browsing," but plenty of Apple QuickTime videos and Adobe PDF documents.

Microsoft's visionary founder warned: "The Internet is the most important single development to come along since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981. It is even more important than the arrival of the graphical user interface (GUI)."

Today, that "most important single development" looms over Microsoft, which in response is becoming the definitive, stodgy computer company of the 2010s, like IBM was in the 1990s.

Microsoft tried to exert control over or influence developing Web standards in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But in response to antitrust actions in Europe and the United States and to business customer demands, Microsoft also pursued a strategy of increased openness. For example, Microsoft's Interoperability Principles contribute to its weakened support of standards it controls.

Microsoft is Lost in the Cloud

In a surprisingly short span of time, Microsoft has lost control of standards and formats outside the enterprise. The company has reached a critical juncture that executives seem unable to comprehend.

Part of Microsoft's problem is corporate cultural. Executives spend too much time focused on competitors. That's how the Internet crept up on the company in the early 1990s; Gates and most key managers were obsessed with AOL and CompuServe. They were looking the wrong way. Now there is the Google obsession, which in the early 2000s has made Microsoft blind to its rapidly eroding control over technology standards and the importance of the next-generating computing platform. While Microsoft frittered away corporate energies chasing Google search, startups and Apple released cloud and mobile computing products that are outside the software giant's control. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Windows Mobile has run aground, as the company seeks solace in the enterprise rather than fully embracing the new applications stack.

Google isn't the enemy Microsoft needs to worry about now. It's the mobile-to-cloud application stack that Apple and various cloud and social media startups are advancing. If iPhone/App Store succeeds, Apple -- or even Google with Android tied to Web search -- will control the standards that define the next-generation computing platform; all around mobile devices and the cloud. Google and newer startups have vested interest in preserving the early Web 3.0 status quo: Open standards or others with published APIs that Microsoft doesn't control.

As Microsoft has lost control of standards defining the new applications stack -- notebook/mobile device to the cloud -- the company has retrenched and pulled back to where its standards control is strongest, the Windows-Office-Windows Server applications stack. In the consumer marketplace, where social media and cloud computing products and services rapidly gain attention and adoption, Microsoft's strategy has been to pull back. Since 2006, Microsoft has cut most of its major consumer desktop applications, shifting some capabilities to Windows Live services.

The timing of Microsoft's consumer pullback coincides with a surge of transforming consumer products or services tied to control and using standards or formats outside Microsoft's control. Most social media startups, whose products and services are taken for granted today, started in the last three years. Facebook, Twitter and YouTube opened to the public in 2006. Most other popular or growing popular social media tools launched within the last three years: Disqus, FriendFeed, tumbr, Twine, Qik and USTREAM, among many, many others. Apple's iPhone launched in summer 2007 and the mobile App Store -- now with more than 100,000 applications -- a year later.

Recent cutbacks and internal refocusing point to Microsoft making its core business market the top investment priority. It's a shortsighted strategy that will lead to long-term problems. The products, services and standards that will eventually take hold in the business market are winning over consumers now. Microsoft doesn't control the standards or file formats behind them.

Among businesses, Microsoft controls an application stack that no competitor has shaken, let along topple. Microsoft's control of technologies, standards and formats gives it a stronghold on enterprise computing. Two-fold problem:

• Microsoft has abandoned most consumer products and focused its cloud strategy (e.g., Azure and Online Services) on businesses.
• Microsoft seeks to preserve its existing applications stack, while failing to engage the newer one around the mobile device and cloud.

Stated differently, Microsoft is too focused on seeking to preserve existing revenue streams when creating newer ones should be the priority. Microsoft's self-preservation approach compels its developers to bind new technologies to Office or Windows, when they should be set free to embrace standards and help establish others. Related, as mentioned earlier, Microsoft also is distracted chasing Google search.

Perhaps Microsoft could, or would, be more adaptable if not for the global economic crisis, which has compelled executives to push harder the preserve-the-application-stack strategy. IBM followed a similar path in the 1980s, seeking to preserve its application stack around the mainframe. IBM released a PC, but the company made protecting its legacy business priority. IBM and its mainframe business didn't go away, but its relevance diminished before a new applications stack. Microsoft faces similar challenge before the new applications stack. That path will make Microsoft the IBM of 2010s, unless there is a dramatic course correction; if it's not already too late.

Technology System Integrator. 2009

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

On our second edition of the Betanews podcast, we take a look at the ongoing effort to keep stuff that we share on the Internet from not being shared so much. The Transportation Safety Administration and the American citizen are very much in the same bucket today, as both are being faced with a new and intriguing privacy and sensitivity debacle...essentially the same one, just in two different respects.

Here's links to the source information referenced in the podcast:

• "TSA manual misstep leads to discipline" by Spencer S. Hsu, from the Washington Post, December 10, 2009.
• "Redacting PDFs" - a December 16, 2005 blog post by Adobe product manager Rick Borstein showing users of current versions of Adobe Acrobat at that time how to make text look like it's redacted, when it's really not.
• The PDF redaction problem: TSA may have been using old software, by Scott Fulton.
• Not the first, not the last, technology predictions for 2010, by Carmi Levy.
• "New Tools to Control Your Experience" by Ruchi Sanghvi, product manager for privacy at Facebook. Here Sanghvi introduces the new privacy controls unveiled today. The video excerpted in today's podcast also appears here.
• "Facebook's New Privacy Changes: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" by Electronic Frontier Foundation senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston.

By Joe Wilcox, Betanews

End of year is typically time for company retrospectives, but 2009 is also end of decade. For Microsoft, the slow economy and push into Web services bookends the decade 2000-2009. Microsoft parallels between the new century's first year and the decade's last year are surprising. I've put together a list of 10 things, presented here in no particular order of importance.

1. Microsoft struggled through recession. In December 2000, Microsoft issued an unexpected profit warning for its fiscal 2001 second quarter. In January 2009, Microsoft released disappointing 2010 second quarter results, announcing intent to lay off 5,000 employees. Recessions marked the beginning and end of the decade, hitting Microsoft sales hard.

2. Major new Windows versions launched. In February 2000, Microsoft released Windows 2000, mainly for the business market. Windows 2000 promised to fix many of the applications and device driver incompatibilities and performance problems associated with predecessor Windows NT. In October 2009, Microsoft launched Windows 7, promising better device driver support and improved performance than predecessor Windows Vista.

3. Internet Explorer bundling with Windows. In April 2000, U.S. District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson found that Microsoft had violated 1898 Sherman Act by, among other things, integrating Internet Explorer into Windows. In January 2009, the European Union issued Statement of Objections that later solidified into a formal ruling against Microsoft's integrating Internet Explorer into Windows.

4. Office on the cheap. In November 2000, Microsoft announced that Office 10 (aka Office XP) would be available by subscription. Microsoft later scraped the subscription plan several times (anyone remember Equipt?) but not the concept. In summer 2009, Microsoft began testing Office Web, a hosted version of the productivity suite for the low subscription price of free.

5. Web services vision to delivery. In June 2000, Microsoft unveiled .NET, which replaced what had been called Next Generation Windows Services. In November 2009, Microsoft announced that its next-generation Azure Web services platform was in production among some businesses, in preparation for Jan. 1, 2010 official launch.

6. Ebook publishers unite. In March 2000, 30 publishers supported launch of Microsoft Reader format for ebooks. In December 2009, Condé Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time announced plans to "develop open standards for a new digital storefront," supporting many portable devices (What? No Microsoft?).

Related: In August 2000, Barnes & Noble started selling ebooks in Microsoft Reader format. In December 2009, Barnes & Noble started selling the Nook ebook reader, based on software from Microsoft rival Google.

7. MSN butterfly takes wing. In February 2000, Microsoft introduced a new MSN logo, the four-color butterfly. In October 2009, Microsoft updated the butterfly logo.

8. Tablet PC keeps on trying. In November 2000, at Comdex, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates unveiled Tablet PC, a concept that never really caught on. In October 2009, Windows 7 launched with touchscreen support, extending and finally fulfilling the original Tablet PC concept.

9. Mobile devices rule the day. Handheld PDAs, many running Palm or Windows CE operating systems, were the hot geek gadgets in 2000, as seen at PC Expo and Comdex trade shows (Anyone remember the first Compaq iPaq?). In 2009, smartphones were so popular that unit sales exceeded laptop sales, according to Gartner. But for smartphones, Microsoft's mobile OS stood behind Apple and Google products for mindshare and geek enthusiasm.

10. The Ballmer Era. In January 2000, Steve Ballmer replaced Gates as Microsoft CEO. Gates stayed as Chairman, a position he still holds. In 2009, Ballmer.... I simply can't complete this one, because people's emotions seem to run so high about him. That's your role, to offer appropriate Ballmer parallel from 2000 to 2009 -- or to add others that I might have missed. Comments are open for your Ballmer insight.

Technology System Integrator. 2009

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

The problem with the release of a Transportation Security Administration security screening manual was not, as many news outlets reported yesterday, the fact that it appeared "out there on the Internet." As US Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told reporters this morning, according to the Washington Post, the TSA manual was supposed to have been posted on the Internet -- it was part of a cache of documents intentionally posted to a government procurement Web site.

The real problem is that the portions of the PDF document that were supposed to have been redacted -- or removed from the file and replaced with blackouts -- were not actually removed. Sec. Napolitano said this morning that disciplinary action may be taken against the TSA employees responsible, and at one point implied that only one person may inevitably be to blame.

But the fact that blackouts were applied yet the underlying text remained, indicates that the eventual cause may be deeper than just personal error. Betanews tests confirm that the supposedly redacted text from the TSA screening document were merely covered up by black rectangles, not deleted. A properly redacted document must clearly show where the original text was located, so as to boldly indicate its removal. The purpose of the blackout, generally, is to leave clear evidence of deletion, and thus not give readers the impression that the removed text could have been anywhere and of any length.

Our tests using Adobe Acrobat Professional, accompanied by our research of Adobe documents, indicate that the TSA may not have been using updated software. If it had, its employees' redaction process may have been more thorough, and that the underlying sensitive text may have been properly deleted.

Acrobat Professional 8 was the first version of Adobe's software to contain its own built-in tools for true redaction. Until then, Adobe directed customers to an add-on product that is still on the market, manufactured by Appligent, called Redax. That tool generates a securely redacted PDF document as the user marks segments of the original document for redaction. Applying the changes dynamically to a duplicate ensures that none of the original text is actually deleted from its file, while simultaneously ensuring that the redacted version of the document actually does get created.

In Acrobat Professional 8 (which is not even the most recent version), the text redaction process is not straightforward or intuitive, though it is meticulous enough that it can only be done deliberately and with full awareness of the results. There is a redaction toolbar, whose principal button is called Mark for Redaction. This button changes the cursor tool into a highlighter for indicating text intended to not only be marked with blackouts, but to be removed from a copy of the file as well.

Acrobat 8 gives the user clear warnings that the redacted file should be saved as a copy. It's therefore not as thorough as the Redax tool, which maintains the redacted file as a simultaneous copy. Nevertheless, Acrobat does guide the user through the process.

In Betanews tests using a different legal document unrelated to the TSA matter, we used the Redaction toolbar to mark a paragraph. We then clicked on Apply Redactions. As a result, using the default settings from Acrobat 8, the redacted text appeared in all black.

We then saved our redacted test document to a separate file. We then tried copying text around the redacted paragraph, and pasting it into a Notepad file to see whether the redacted text was still existent and legible, as it was in the TSA document. The redacted text was missing from the copied element, although the non-redacted text around it was properly pasted.

We also examined the saved, redacted file. PDF text isn't like HTML markup, so you can't read the main body of content just from its source material -- Adobe masks and compresses it. Still, the clearly changed portion of compressed code in the vicinity of the redacted text, coupled by the slightly smaller file size in proportion with the paragraph we redacted, indicates that the paragraph's contents did not appear in our test document -- it was gone, as it should be.

In short, had the TSA been using updated Adobe software, the security incident never would have happened.

In the TSA document, the supposedly redacted portions are masked with four-sided black rectangles with red borders, indicating that they were simply drawn as geometric objects. Prior to the release of Acrobat 8, Adobe was fully aware of customers' requests for true redaction tools.

In a December 2005 post to Adobe's own blog for legal professionals, the company's business development manager, Rick Borstein, acknowledged not only that the lack of built-in redaction was a missing feature, but also a security concern for the US government.

"A PDF distributed by the US government contained covered over text that was fully accessible," Borstein wrote. "In this case, the user authored a document in Microsoft Word and used Word's Tables and Borders toolbar to set the background color to black. Thus, black text on a black background which was not visually readable, but does not eliminate the data. When the user converted the document to PDF, a simple search of the document revealed the text."

He also related a separate incident where a user in a law office had used Acrobat to create false annotations -- notations intended for use as comments -- but positioned them over text that was not supposed to be read. "Un-redacting" the text, therefore, was as simple as turning Annotations view off.

Borstein went on to recommend that customers invest in Appligent's Redax tool. But then he offered readers an interim solution, something he felt would suffice for many users in the interim. He showed them how to draw black rectangles around text so that it appears redacted.

"There is another alternative which doesn't require any special software, but I do not recommend it unless you are *) really, really careful; *) seldom need to redact," he wrote, before demonstrating the rectangle effect. To ensure that the effect really does permanently cover up text from viewing, Borstein suggested that the resulting file be "flattened," or converted into a document with embedded TIFF images -- which is something many law offices, courts, and government agencies do today.

In a 2006 brochure on the subject of redaction (PDF available here) -- again, prior to the release of Acrobat 8 -- Adobe clearly warned its customers that customers tend to fail to properly redact sensitive material simply because they don't understand the nature of electronic documents.

"Editors may try to cover sensitive information with a colored rectangle or by highlighting text in black," reads Adobe's 2006 brochure. "While these methods work for hard copy documents, they are not appropriate for electronic documents because there are ways to extract the information from the resulting PDF document."

Acrobat is not, and never was, a word processor. The original text for documents is often created elsewhere -- in many cases, in Microsoft Word. There, users would often find their own ways to black out text in a document, making it appear to be redacted. They then operated under the mistaken assumption that Acrobat merely processed the text that users could see, when it actually absorbs all the text from the original, including that which appears obscured.

"The key to understanding how sensitive data can be embedded in a PDF document is that information hidden or covered in an electronic document, can easily be recovered," Adobe's brochure reads. "The solution is to ensure that sensitive information is not just visually hidden or made illegible, but is actually deleted from the source file."

Again, Adobe recommended Appligent's Redax tool for securely redacting text through Acrobat, especially when the source material is unavailable. Still, Adobe's warnings paint a much clearer picture of the operating conditions for any office that utilized, or continues to use, older versions of software including Adobe's. Since Acrobat is not a word processor, and since the source documents being prepared for public distribution may not necessarily be attached to those documents, a worker may not have had any actual tools for deleting the material he or she was directed to redact. Though a document can be created in Acrobat, a document whose source material comes from elsewhere, acts like a read-only copy. With modern versions of Acrobat, text from that copy may be redacted, and its underlying content deleted. But the result is not like hitting the Delete button on a word processor; truly redacted sections are clearly marked.

With older versions of Acrobat, a user may not have had many options. He could have drawn a rectangle around the blacked-out portion, but the next step would have been to flatten the file -- to make it look like something scanned from the copy machine. It may have also ballooned the byte count of the final output. What's more, the act of rendering the public portion of the text unusable, may have been a violation of policy.

All these factors should be taken into account during the government's investigation of the TSA's non-redacted document release, especially before considering the matter of who is eventually to blame.

Technology System Integrator. 2009

 Technology System Integrator your source for IT solutions, we focus solely on embracing our client's with the following services, Business Phone Services, Networking Design, Application Development, Tech Support, Help Desk, Network Support, Computer  Repair Services, Network Security, Managed Network and  all other technology needs.

Helping organizations across all industry to achieve their business goals and objectives by lowering the cost and maximizing the performance of their information technology systems.

 Technology System  Integrator TSI specializes in the design, configuration, implementation  and Network management of local and wide area Network (LAN/WAN) solut

By Tim Conneally, Betanews

Mobile browsers have come a long way in a relatively short time. In a way, webOS, iPhone OS, and Android users have been kind of spoiled by the fast and easy-to-use browsers installed on their devices by default. For these sorts of users -- the ones who pull out their mobile phones to run a search every time someone has an unanswered question -- it's easy to forget that much of the mobile world would rather avoid opening its default mobile browser at all.

Opera may be the most prominent third-party solution to poor mobile browsing experience, but free browsers such as Bolt and Skyfire are quickly making a name as well. They too seek to improve the mobile Web experience for everyone, even those on resource-constrained devices with less-than-lovable browsers built in.

This week, both of these cross-platform browsers received significant updates.

Bolt from Bitstream (which made its name in software as a retail seller of fonts) is not even one year old yet, but has already shown promise as an alternative browser for devices that support the MIDP 2.0 and CLDC 1.0+ profiles. Along with its desktop-style browsing functions, Bolt supports streaming video, copy and paste, and the ability to upload photo or video content to the Web.

This week, Bitsream rolled out Bolt 1.6, which the company said adds full socket-based connectivity, a new password manager, and the ability to be set as the default browser on BlackBerry devices. This means when links are embedded in e-mails and text or instant messages, they can be clicked upon and opened in Bolt now instead of having to be copied and pasted or otherwise opened in BlackBerry's default browser. Mobile users can point their default Web browser to Bitstream's Bolt download site to install the new version of Bolt.

Skyfire has gained considerable attention in the third party mobile browser scene thanks to its support for Flash 10, Silverlight 2, AJAX, and JavaScript, and its snappy server-side compression techniques. These factors combined bring users an experience that is comparable to, if not actually better than, the webOS, iPhone, and Android browsers. Unfortunately, device support for Skyfire is not as vast as Bolt, and the most recent update will only affect Windows Mobile users.

Skyfire 1.5 for Windows Mobile (both PPC and SMP) adds full VGA support, a new UI more tailored to touchscreen "flick" browsing, and full-screen mode with no UI layers. Flash and Silverlight have been updated to the latest versions with this release, and Skyfire claims the browser has been upgraded on both client and server side for and overall faster browsing experience.

Though this update is only for Windows Mobile 5, 6, and 6.X devices, Skyfire says S60 5th edition will get the fully updated browser some time in January.

Technology System Integrator. 2009