Game of thrones: The men who would be Ballmer

	Oracle takes a shine to Ruby in the cloud | VMware patches spotlight growing virtualization security risks
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	Game of thrones: The men who would be Ballmer Nobody knows why Microsoft's Windows chief Steven Sinofsky unexpectedly jumped ship last Monday, despite rampant but unverifiable rumors. But Sinofsky is simply the latest in a long line of potential CEOs who've left Microsoft, as CEO Steve Ballmer's controversial tenure continues with no heir apparent in sight -- and perhaps not desired. Still, those who've left Microsoft could be named Ballmer's successor at some point. Read More WHITE PAPER: Socialtext 5 Biggest Blunders to Avoid with Enterprise Social Software This paper is designed to help you focus on the areas that are most critical to success with social software, and to avoid the five biggest and most common blunders others have made when implementing social software for their organizations. Read Now! In this Issue Oracle takes a shine to Ruby in the cloud VMware patches spotlight growing virtualization security risks Hackers break into two FreeBSD Project servers using stolen SSH keys Apple to kill Messages beta for OS X Lion next month Exascale unlikely before 2020 due to budget woes WEBCAST: Riverbed Extend the Virtual Edge of the Data Center to the Branch Organizations today are faced with the challenge of satisfying both end-users and IT. While end-users require flexible and reliable access to their data and applications, IT organizations need to meet those demands while keeping budgets under control and company assets secure. Learn More Oracle takes a shine to Ruby in the cloud With its new investment in third-party cloud vendor Engine Yard, Oracle is proving it will do whatever it takes to fill gaps it might find in its own cloud strategy. Oracle's Engine Yard move, announced last week, reveals that the company will spend money and roll the dice on other vendors in the cloud space even as it builds its own capabilities. Read More VMware patches spotlight growing virtualization security risks EMC VMware recently rolled out an update to its vSphere API, aimed at fixing a denial-of-service vulnerability in ESX and ESXi. The company also updated the ESX Service Console to include several open-source security updates. If companies don't apply the API patch, they leave the door open for unauthenticated users to send malicious API requests and disable the host daemon, according to VMware. This exploitation could prevent management activities on the host; however, VMs running on the host would not be affected. Read More Hackers break into two FreeBSD Project servers using stolen SSH keys Hackers have compromised two servers used by the FreeBSD Project to build third-party software packages. Anyone who has installed such packages since Sept. 19 should completely reinstall their machines, the project's security team warned. Read More Apple to kill Messages beta for OS X Lion next month Apple has told Mac owners running OS X Lion that the beta of Messages, its replacement for both the older iChat instant messaging service and SMS (short message service) texting, will expire Dec. 14. To keep using the service, customers must upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion. Emails announcing the shutoff began reaching Lion users last week. Read More Exascale unlikely before 2020 due to budget woes The U.S. Dept. of Energy, which builds the world's largest supercomputers, is now targeting 2020 to 2022 target for an exascale system, two to four years later than earlier expectations. The new timeframe assumes that Congress will fund the project in the fiscal 2014 budget. Despite a belief among scientists that exascale systems can help deliver breakthrough scientific breakthroughs, improve U.S. competitiveness, and deepen the understanding of problems like climate change, the development effort has so far received limited funding -- nowhere near the billions of dollars likely needed. Read More
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