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Chengdu may not be as widely known as the other major Chinese cities, but its IT services operations are on the radar of many U.S. firms. The 7.9 magnitude earthquake near Chengdu, similar in magnitude to the earthquake that struck San Francisco in 1906  affected a fast growing software development center.

To protect themselves, many organizations have developed sophisticated IT asset use policies while others have combined policy with encryption technology in hopes of better securing computers and the sensitive information they contain. While these are necessary steps, organizations still struggle to compensate for the human factor.

According to a recent survey of 1,400 enterprises, more than 60% of data breaches are the work of those operating within the firewall – insiders such as employees, contractors and others with ready access to sensitive information. Accidently or by design, employees will always be the weakest link in computer security strategies that rely on their diligence to provide consistent protection.

Rather than imposing strangling IT asset policies aimed at forcing end users to comply, endpoint security strategies use centrally-managed technology to ensure that mobile devices such as laptops secure themselves. Using readily-available computer theft recovery, remote data delete and Internet-based IT asset management, organizations can free end-users from computer security responsibilities while ensuring maximum protection for computers and the information stored on them.

So far it is nothing more than Anonymous has done in its efforts to protest against Scientology, but nationalistic Chinese hackers have issued a call for a distributed denial of service attack against CNN to coincide with the street protests.

While there is no apparent link between Anti-CNN and the hackers calling for the denial-of-service attack, the team at The Dark Visitor, who have been tracking Chinese hacking activity for some time, believe that it may be members of the Red Hacker Alliance that are pushing for the online attack to accompany the physical demonstrations.

Microsoft has long said it wants to release Windows 7 about three years after Vista, which was released to manufacturing in November 2006 but not officially launched until January 2007. Given Microsoft's recent track record - Vista arrived more than five years after XP -- most outsiders had pegged sometime in 2010 as a safe bet for Windows 7's arrival.

While numbers like those tend to send cold shivers up the spines of storage professionals, there are a couple of things to keep in mind: 1) The remedy isn't necessarily more storage hardware, but more efficient means of managing data; and 2) the study was backed by EMC, which just introduced new data management tools for the Centera operating system. A parsing of the numbers reveals that only 35 percent of today's data is generated by the enterprise, with only 5 percent directly attributable to the server farm. The vast majority of it comes from individuals, largely in the form of increased video and image traffic.

Cyberheat, in Tucson, Arizona, is the sixth company that has settled FTC complaints about porn spam since 2005. A complaint against a seventh company is pending. The six companies that have settled the 2005 complaints have agreed to pay more than $1.6 million in civil penalties.

The FTC had accused the companies of exposing children and others to sexual images. The spam e-mail was the equivalent of "electronic flashing," the FTC said.

The FTC alleged that Cyberheat violated the agencys FTCs Adult Labeling Rule and the Can-Spam Act, which require commercial e-mailers of sexually explicit material to use the phrase sexually explicit in subject lines. The rule and law also require that e-mail senders ensure that the initially viewable area of the e-mail does not contain graphic sexual images.

Cyberheats affiliate markets also did not provide adequate opt-out mechanisms in their e-mail and did not provide a postal address for the company, the FTC said. Can-Spam requires both.

The survey also determined that 24 percent of companies are considering plans to introduce IT governance practices, compared to 22 percent in 2005 and 18 percent in 2003. In addition, only 20 percent said their organisations were not considering implementing such practices, compared to 36 percent in 2005 and 42 percent in 2003.

By region, North America and Europe have the highest adoption of IT governance initiatives globally, with 50 percent of respondents from each of these two regions indicating that they have already implemented, or are in the process of implementing, such processes and practices. Forty-four percent of executives from Asia and 27 percent of South American respondents reported similar plans.

The bottom line is that many organizations around the world are needlessly sacrificing money, productivity, and competitive advantage by not implementing effective IT governance. Well-governed enterprises have been shown to provide better returns to stakeholders, and the same goes for governance over information technology.

The survey also found that the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), with the ISO 20000 standard, is used by 24 percent of organizations polled and is the preferred framework associated with IT governance. The ISO 20000 covers the IT service management aspects under Itil.

The ITGI-developed Control objectives for information and related technology framework, on the other hand, has doubled its user base. In addition, over 50 percent of respondents indicated they were aware of the framework, compared to 27 percent two years ago.

With regards to leading IT governance projects, the chief information officer was identified as the ideal champion by the majority of respondents (40 percent). Some 25 percent said the chief executive should be in charge, while the next-most-frequently cited roles for heading IT governance were the chief financial officer and IT manager.

Compared to the 2005 survey, more respondents were able to identify organizations which can help their companies implement IT governance. Large IT services providers or consultancy companies were the most frequently cited, followed by audit firms and smaller, niche IT players.

It's an arbitrary but interesting milestone for the open-source Web browser, whose development is overseen by Mozilla but that's also developed and extended by a large number of outside programmers. In September 2007, Firefox crossed the 400 million download mark, indicating an average rate a bit shy of 20 million per month at present.

According to the Spread Firefox site, there had been 500,168,448 downloads as of 6:15 a.m. PST. About 12 hours earlier, there had been more than 499,900,000.

Firefox has spread widely in the years since its release. The project originally was named Phoenix to symbolize a rising from the ashes of the Netscape open-source browser project that began in 1998 but languished for many years as Microsoft's Internet Explorer solidified its lead.

Now Firefox programmers are working on version 3, which brings performance improvements and interface changes, and Mozilla also is working on a mobile version of the browser for handheld devices.

A sister subsidiary of Mozilla, Mozilla Messaging, is working to reproduce the successes of Firefox with the open-source Thunderbird e-mail software.

ATF was against letting these specialists telework because it says the material they need to remove from agency offices in order to telework posed a security risk. The Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP) became involved at the request of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which successfully argued its case for allowing the examiners to telework on a pilot basis.

Amazon said it is the only retailer to offer DRM-free MP3s from all four major music labels as well as thousands of independent labels.

Amazon MP3, launched in September 2007, offers DRM-free MP3 music downloads, which now includes more than 3.3 million songs.

Online retailer Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday its digital music store will now offer songs from Sony BMG Music Entertainment without copy-protection technology, or digital rights management.

Amazon said the deal makes it the first retailer to offer customers DRM-free songs from all four major music companies in the MP3 format.

Songs in MP3 format can play on the widest range of digital music players including Apple Inc's iPod, Microsoft Corp's Zune and various mobile phones.

Sony BMG, which is the second largest music company in the world, is home to such artists as Beyonce, Britney Spears and Celine Dion.

Earlier this week, Sony BMG became the last of the four major music companies to start selling its digital songs without copy protection with the launch of its MusicPass service.

The music industry posted a 15 percent drop in U.S. album sales in 2007 as fans bought fewer CDs. Though digital music sales have been rising, they have not made up for the revenue shortfall, forcing executives to consider new business models and methods to boost sales.

One of the issues for music companies in 2007 was whether dropping DRM protection would help drive digital music sales.

Fans have been frustrated by the limitations imposed by DRM, which can prevent a user from playing a digital song on an incompatible PC or portable media player.

Pondering the case of the missing iPhones has been a hot topic every since Apple reported its financial results. In fact, it is almost become a sport. Here is a look at some the two primary theories being floated about iPhone inventory and my take.

Theory 1: Apple has a demand problem (and a fat channel). This theory is outlined nicely by Tom Krazit. Given there is a 2 million iPhone gap between Apple and AT&T figures it is quite possible that these devices are wallowing in the channel. An analyst at Sanford Bernstein rings the demand/bloated channel bell. They feel that there is lower demand and slower iPhone sales ahead.

This theory could very well come from a Chinese newspaper report saying that Apples OEMs have cut their production schedule from 2 million iPhones to something more in the range of 1 million to 1.2 million units. We are skeptical of the report largely because other analysts such as BMO Capital Markets feel that Apple has about 500,000 phones in its channel across the globe. They arrive at that 500,000 tally be taking the difference between the AT&T and Apple December figures (2 million and 3.7 million, respectively) and factoring in iPhone sold in Europe (400,000 and sales of unlocked phones). In other words, an inventory level of 500,000 iPhones spread across four carriers globally does not seem unreasonable. A UBS analyst estimates that AppleÂ’s iPhone inventory is about 350,000.

Theory 2: We do not know where the iPhones are because they were sold, unlocked and spread around the globe. Some analysts feel that 20 percent the iPhone sales thus far have been unlocked. That equates to about 750,000 iPhones.

A UBS analyst puts the unlocked iPhone count higher at about 1 million. He writes:

Since AAPL sold over 4mm to date, it could imply that up to 1,000,000 iPhones in 2007 were either unlocked (many shipped overseas) or not activated (we calculate only 350k in channel inventory at 4Q-end). We believe news points to strong interest in iPhone globally, but could mean demand was actually lower in the U.S. and that AAPLs carrier payments could be lower.

Apple is still learning about the unlocked issue, which could account for a lot of the supply chain banter. It is safe to assume that these figure may be closer to the truth when it comes to unlocked iPhone sales. The downside is that Apple gets less revenue. On the upside though, there is a blue print for sales of unlocked iPhone sales if Apple gets out of its AT&T deal in the future.

Meanwhile, Apple CFO said on the companys earnings conference call that the number of unlocked iPhones sold was significant, but he would not elaborate. If unlocked iPhone sales are significant to Apple it is a big issue.

Theory 3: AT&T and other carriers may not have caught the last few days of December in their counts.

This theory is the most boring of the bunch, but also quite plausible. If you got an iPhone Dec. 27 and did not activate it until Jan. 2 you missed the quarter. Does this discrepancy account for 1.7 million iPhones. No. But it does indicate that AppleÂ’s channel is not as bloated as people may think.

Last Monday, Merrill Lynch's chief North American economist issued a research note to clients saying a recession has already arrived. Rosenberg cited rising unemployment and energy costs, a collapsing housing market and dwindling consumer confidence (the usual suspects).

Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley economists issued their own research note last week, predicting a mild recession in the first half of 2008. And Goldman Sachs economist Jan Hatzius predicted late last year that a recession in the U.S. was on the way.

"No, we won't do that. In the so-called smart phone business we will concentrate solely on software with our Windows Mobile program," Gates was quoted as saying in the interview published on Wednesday.

"We have partnerships with a lot of device manufacturers from Samsung to Motorola and this variety brings us significantly more than if we would make our own mobile phone," he added.

Apple's iPhone, which also plays music and lets users browse the internet, has been a big hit.