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Venture capitalist Geoffrey Moore has no doubts about what puts the U.S. ahead of so many other lands. “The crown jewel in our economy,” says Moore, author of management and innovation-themed books such as Dealing with Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Stage of Their Evolution, “is our ability to lead innovation.”

It’s a comforting image. But it also seems a touch out of date. Retail sales dropped 2.7 percent in the U.S. in December. The unemployment rate stands at 7.2 percent, with 3.6 million people tossed out of work in the past year. Home foreclosures jumped 81 percent in 2008. Clearly, President Barack Obama and his team have their work cut out to help the U.S. regain its glory.

That’s why Moore, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, and other Silicon Valley veterans, such as Genius.com Chief Executive David Thompson and Kevin Efrusy of Accel Partners, are pushing for an IT innovation tax credit. Their open letter, dated Jan. 7, was sent to then President-elect Barack Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and other Washington pols. This temporary break — proposed for two years initially, with an option to extend it for four more years should an economic recovery prove elusive — would reward companies that invest in IT. Any business spending at least 80 percent of its 2008 annual IT budget would qualify for the 25 percent credit, providing an incentive for executives to keep buying both hardware and software.

“People talk about infrastructure, but then they build a bridge to nowhere,” says Thompson, who had been chief marketing officer at Web-conferencing outfit WebEx before founding Genius.com, a B-to-B marketing site, en 2005. “Too often people don’t take the next step to assess how [that infrastructure] actually helps you innovate, become more productive, and actually generate more revenue and…

Fuente: newsfactor.com

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The world’s top virus hunters are watching every move made by the attacker in control of a nasty new Internet worm — referred to as “downadup” or “conficker.”

What worries them most is that the person, or group, controlling the worm could at any time direct the PCs to carry out criminal activities on an unprecedented scale. And there’s not much anyone can do to stop them.

The attackers could use the infected PCs to steal data, spread spam or commit other routine cybercrimes.

“We have a lot of people looking at this, and with everybody watching it, hopefully they will be too scared to do anything,” says Patrik Runald, security adviser at F-Secure. “That’s really the only thing we can hope for.”

In less than three weeks, the worm has spread to more than 1 million PCs around the globe, mostly inside companies, according to estimates from F-Secure and Atlanta-based security firm SecureWorks. A worm of that magnitude has not been seen since 2004.

The worm takes advantage of a security hole that exists on hundreds of millions of Windows PCs. Microsoft issued an emergency patch for the hole in October. Because most Windows PCs connected to the Internet were vulnerable without the patch, the security community went on high alert.

The worm first appeared on Jan. 7. Tech security researchers say it probed for and implanted itself on any unpatched Windows PC. It then scanned for, broke into and infected all nearby computer servers. It also implanted itself onto any portable device plugged into the PCs’ USB inputs, such as a thumb drive storage stick, an iPod or a digital camera. When the corrupted device was plugged into another computer, that machine became infected — and began searching for other PCs to infect.

Don Jackson, senior researcher at SecureWorks, says infections have been spreading in…

Fuente: newsfactor.com

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