I’m here at the headquarters of security company McAfee, where I spoke by phone with Nguyen and in person with McAfee spokesman (and former CNET News security reporter) Joris Evers.

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SANTA CLARA, Calif–It’s early morning in California, and so far there are no reports of problems due to the much-anticipated
Conficker worm. In Asia, where it’s already evening, the worm hasn’t done any noticeable damage, according to McAfee’s Hong Kong-based security expert, Vu Nguyen.

What was once an eagerly awaited debut is turning into a fiasco for the New York-based start-up, which has tried for more than a year to get off the ground.

Qtrax is close to getting signatures from Universal and EMI, said the source but, “Qtrax spoke too soon.”

But on Monday, Qtrax was more than 12 hours late launching its music service. A day earlier, the big record companies made news by contradicting Qtrax. They said the company was not authorized to sell their music.

Services, such as Imeem and Last.fm, which only stream songs, offer music from all four major labels, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, The EMI Group, and Sony BMG Music Entertainment.

But how did Qtrax get mired in this mix up? Is the company a victim of a misunderstanding? Were executives overly confident when boasting to reporters that they had signed the top labels?

Previously, Qtrax had succeeded in striking agreements with at least two of the record companies as the start-up was preparing to ramp up. But sources with knowledge of the deals said those deals have expired.

Executives there wooed reporters by promising to corral illegal file sharing. They built an interface on top of the Gnutella network where millions of songs are pirated. They pledged to offer users a legal way to download and share music.

Meanwhile, SpiralFrog, one of the best-known services and one that enables people to download to a PC and a handful of portable devices (but not the
iPod), has been toiling in the sector for nearly two years and has managed to land a music deal with only one top label: Universal.

Perhaps actress Kelly Preston said it best in the movie Jerry McGuire: “It’s not ‘Trust my handshake.’ It’s make the sale. Get it signed. There shouldn’t be confusion about that.”

The issues with Qtrax illustrate two things. First, the labels have clearly signaled that they are willing to give ad-supported music a try–just not with downloads. Secondly, Qtrax executives should know better than to announce deals when they don’t have ink. Qtrax CEO Allan Klepfisz told CNET News.com on Sunday that the company had agreements, but acknowledged that they just weren’t signed.

But everybody knows that without signed contracts, there is no deal.

As Qtrax struggles with licensing deals, the big record companies are partnering with a growing number of ad-supported sites that stream songs to listeners but don’t allow the music to be downloaded to computers or digital music players.

How this public relations nightmare affects Qtrax’s prospects for the future is unclear. But don’t believe the old adage that all publicity is good publicity. As it stands, the debacle undermines Qtrax’s competence, if not its integrity.

At first blush, Qtrax seemed like a good idea.

Qtrax managers said they had convinced the big record labels that it could turn file sharing into a cash cow for them. They said all four of the most powerful labels were on board.

The gift marks is the second time in recent years that a philanthropist has come through with the money to keep Fermilab in business. But even with the cash infusion, the lab still faces an uncertain future.

The only particle physics laboratory in the United States has received a $5 million grant to continue operating.

An anonymous donor gave the gift to the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, of Batavia, Ill., to keep the facility from laying off more employees and prevent some planned furloughs.

I just downloaded Mozilla’s Firefox 3.0 Beta 4, and loved what I saw:

See that?
Firefox is localized into a wide range of languages, which is great. But what I appreciate even more is that it treats Windows,
Mac OS X, and Linux as peers. In Microsoft’s world, software runs solely or best on Microsoft’s operating system, database, etc. Given the chance, most proprietary software companies behave like this.

Not Mozilla. Not Eclipse. Not Zimbra. Etc.

There’s something about open source that speaks up for the potential user who isn’t part of the mainstream. Somebody, somewhere, is like that person and has contributed the code to bring the outsider in.

No, not all open source is written for every platform in every language. True open source, however, doesn’t mitigate against someone doing this, which for the more popular projects generally leads to a myriad of “itches” getting scratched.

I love Firefox. I love that it doesn’t treat me like a second-class citizen because I use a Mac. I love its egalitarian (and now super-speedy) nature.

This is how software should be written.

Other notable points culled from the “State of Spam” report for February 2008 (PDF) include:

There was an appreciable decline of image spam during January 2008.
The overall file size of spam messages has also decreased.
Product spam, the largest category, makes up 28 percent of all spam.
Internet Web hosting and Web design spam makes up 23 percent.
Financial spam is in third place at 12 percent.
However, health-related spam (those Viagra e-mails) only make up a mere 6 percent.

Jim Zemlin is no fun. In an insightful blog posting, the president of the Linux Foundation does a reality check on SCO’S $100 MILLION CASH INFUSION!!!!) and finds…not much reality.

Actually let me be more clear: not only is there no $100 million dollars in cash in SCO’s bank account, but if the proposal is accepted, there will only be a conditional availability of that large number.

The terms of the proposal are publicly available with the court, and what they show is that SCO would receive only $5 million dollars in cash – the rest could only be drawn down at an exorbitant rate of more than 17%. Not a very efficient cost of capital even when compared to some of the worst credit card rates in the market. This would be like me saying, “Jim Zemlin receives $50k investment” when I sign up for a new credit card.

It probably is even worse than this, Jim. According to some sources, Steve Norris, the “Carlyle Group co-founder” behind the “investment,” has no money and a dwindling number of friends with money, as he recently fell out with GMG, the investment group with whom he had been officing (according to court documents).

The more I look into this, the more I think Mr. Norris takes after Darl McBride: low on substance, high on hype. Now if only Mr. Norris could find $100 million to invest in real open-source companies, he might have a fortune on his hands.

VMware announced on Tuesday its cloud operating system–dubbed vSphere 4–with plans for general availability in the second quarter.

With the effort, VMware is attempting to bridge virtualized data centers–now known as “private clouds”–and growing cloud computing services from the likes of Amazon.com and others. However, this bridging process is a work in progress due to the lack of standards. VMware’s big pitch is that vSphere can run your data center and allow you to bridge out when external resources are needed.

John Gilmartin, director of product marketing at VMware, said the company is hoping to ease enterprises into cloud computing without redoing architecture.

“There’s a big gap between what most people talk about as cloud and what people are doing today in the enterprise,” Gilmartin said. VMware’s plan is to get cloud providers to use its operating system and then seamlessly hook up to enterprises using vSphere 4.

It’s unclear what happens if a vSphere shop isn’t hooking up to another VMware powered cloud. Gilmartin said the company is working behind the scenes on application swapping among clouds but didn’t have details or timelines for such standards. It is clear that VMware sees vSphere 4 as a way to thwartboth Microsoft’s cloud OS, Azure, and its virtualization effort, Hyper-V.

Gilmartin argued that Microsoft’s approach with Azure requires too many architecture changes for enterprises. He also noted that vSphere will support more operating systems.

(Credit:
VMware) In the meantime, VMware has packed these key features into vSphere 4:

• A 30 percent increase in application consolidation ratios.

• Up to 50 percent in storage savings by allowing virtual machines to only use storage as needed.

• Up to 20 percent additional power and cooling savings.

• vSphere 4 scales better with the ability to pool 32 physical servers with up to 2,048 processor cores, 1,280 virtual machines, 32 terabytes of RAM, 16 petabytes of storage, and 8,000 network ports.

Here’s the chart detailing vSphere 4 vs. VMware Infrastructure 3 (in the “current” column):

(Credit:
VMware)

One of the more interesting features of vSphere is a fault tolerance option. Data center managers can keep their most valuable apps running even if the underlying hardware fails. By clicking a box to protect a virtual machine, vSphere 4 creates a shadow copy of the application to take over in the event of a failure. There is a performance hit since you’re allocating computing resources to the shadow application, but Gilmartin notes that only 20 percent to 30 percent of enterprise software would have to be fault tolerant.

(Credit:
CanvasPop)

You know that picture of you and your cat that features so prominently on your Facebook page? Well, play your cards right and you and Buttons could show up on the 7,400-square-foot Reuters Billboard in New York’s Times Square. Fortunately for the rest of us cynical travelers, the pic will only tower 23 stories above the city for 15 seconds.

It’s all part of a promotion by a new company called CanvasPop that lets you print any image at any size on canvas, including pics from Facebook, Flickr, Photobucket, and iPhones. CanvasPop’s first 100 customers will get to beam shots from their personal collections above New York starting next month. Then, for $40, they can get a time-stamped photograph as a memento.

Services like Artistic Photo Canvas and Canvas Press already print photos onto canvas. But CanvasPop–which just came out of beta–claims to be the only one to turn low-res images from social-media sites and phones into high-quality canvas prints.

No word on whether CanvasPop will screen images before they show up in Times Square or if you’ll be able to humiliate yourself and your friends at will.

Andrii Nikitin and son

(Credit:
Zack Urlocker)

MySQL has been very good to the open-source world. In turn, I’d like to see if we can give something back.

Andrii Nikitin is one of MySQL’s support engineers based in Ukraine. As Zack Urlocker recently posted on his blog, however, Andrii has a major concern right now which has nothing to do with customer support:

Andrii’s son Ivan, who is 2 1/2, is in need of a bone marrow transplant operation. This will require going to a clinic in Europe that will not be covered by regular insurance. So Andrii has aksed to see if we could help raise funds. The cost is expected to be $150,000 – $250,000. A huge amount for an engineer from Ukraine to cover. But a small amount by many people could make a big difference.

Consistent with your interest and means, I’d encourage you to help Andrii out.

As for how to donate, here are the details:

Paypal (or go to http://tinyurl.com/6rxjsz).

Or by check payable to: MySQL, Inc.

Mail to: MySQL, Inc.
Attn: Linda Dong
20450 Stevens Creek Blvd #350
Cupertino, CA 95014

or US wire transfer:
MySQL Inc: 7396643001
SWIFT: NDEAUS3N

or International wire transfer in any currency:
Bank: Nordea Bank
Bank address: Stockholm, Sweden
Bank account: 3259 17 03868
IBAN: SE27 3000 0000 0325 9170 3868
SWIFT: NDEASESS

He assured Second Life enthusiasts that he would remain on full-time at the company as chairman of the board.

Rosedale, known in Second Life by his avatar’s name Philip Linden, did not provide a concrete date for his change in role, only saying that the company has “decided to search for a new CEO.”

(Credit:
James Martin/CNET News.com)

He continued: “This is a decision driven by my desire to best grow SL and match my job to both our needs and my passions. We don’t have a specific timeline, and I don’t expect my job to change while we are looking for someone.”

It sounds like the company is looking for a veteran business professional rather than a futurist visionary. “I feel that the most important contributions I have made and will continue to make to Second Life are related to building both the product and the company through my direct contributions to vision, strategy, and design,” Rosedale wrote in a post on the official Second Life blog.

“As we grow, the role of our CEO will increasingly be to hire and grow the right team–to lead and help the company scale–to thousands of people and tens of millions of users of Second Life.”

Corporate upheaval at Linden Lab has been going on for some time now. In December, Chief Technology Officer Cory Ondrejka left the company, and leaked e-mails seemed to indicate that Rosedale had fired him over creative differences.

Second Life, meanwhile, has been going through some rough patches outside of the boardroom. A series of banking scandals earlier this year led the virtual world to effectively ban in-world banks. Issues with vandalism and political radicalism briefly shook the community, and it has still failed to rebound from the backlash that followed in the wake of breathless media hype about virtual worlds.

These days, when you hear about Second Life in the mainstream media, it’s coming from dweeby Dwight Schrute on The Office. Linden Lab likely hopes to pull in a CEO who can change that.