Caroline Kennedy

There are a lot of reasons why Dell Inc. agreed to buy Perot Systems Corp. for $3.9 billion, but Congress' vote earlier this year to appropriate billions of dollars to spread the use of electronic medical records may be a key one. Even before today's announcment that Dell plans to buy Perot, the PC maker and IT services firm had agreements in place develop platforms dedicated to electronic health care applications. Perot, which says that about half of its $2.8 billion in annual revenue is derived from health care projects, is in a good position to gain a significant chunk of the $36 billion the federal government is poised to spend on IT related health care projects.

During a conference call with reporters today, Michael Dell, CEO and chairman of Dell, called the move "the right acquisition" for his company, and that the two Texas-based firms share several similar characteristics. "Our products, services and structures are overwhelmingly complementary," Dell said. EDS was spun off in 1996 as an independent firm and remained that way until it was acquired last year by Hewlett-Packard Co. for $13,9 billion . Ross Perot founded Perot Systems in 1988. Harry Greenspun, chief medical officer for Perot Systems' health care group, told investors garthered at an industry conference this month that there's tremendous opportunity for companies like Perot in the health care market. "Most hospitals, most physicians' offices are very immature in their adoption in their technology," he said, according to an archived recording on Perot's web site. Ross Perot, the chairman emeritus of Perot, added, "We saw this as a cultural match, and we saw what we could do together, and I think that made it a lot easier to jump on Michael's vision to build Dell," Perot founded Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in 1962 and sold it to General Motors Corp. in 1984 for $2.5 billion. Dell hopes to complete the deal by year's end, just after the federal fiscal year starts on Oct. 1, which is when federal spending on electronic records is set to begin in earnest. Dell and Perot are already jointly offering what Greenspan called a "dumb box" without ports of disk drives.

The demand for help in implementing new health care IT projects should come quickly - Under the law, health care providers have to start upgrading e-health systems by 2015 or face federal penalties. The Software-as-a-Service system delivers electronic records to virtual desktops that charge customers on a subscription basis. "This is a different way of delivering this service," said Greenspun. Bendor-Samuel said improved revenue from health care projects should be a strong side effect of the merger, but contended that Dell's primary interest is gaining access to a broader base of enterprise customers. "It's great to be a dominant player in the fastest growing segment of the economy, but I view that as a nice thing to have," he said. The purchase of Perot Systems will also give Dell some credibility among large users as a service provider, said Peter Bendor-Samuel, CEO of Everest Group, an Dallas-based outsourcing consultancy. "It both significantly improves their delivery capability and tremendously improves their credibility," he said. Dane Anderson, an analyst at Gartner Inc., believes that the deal shows only that Dell is finally embarking on a services strategy. It has not offered the broader consulting and integration services provided by IT services firms like Perot Systems, he added.. "Really, where the opportunity is in the nearest term is to bring more capabilities to the table for that Dell installed based of clients, he said.

Dell's support operation has traditionally focused on providing services to meet the needs of existing users. Anderson said that he doesn't expect Dell to quickly gain new services contracts due to the acquisition of Perot. Enterprise aren't likely to exit existing contracts with other services providers.

SAP said Wednesday it contacted Oracle and its CEO, Larry Ellison, in recent months over concerns about the future of the Java programming language and competition in the database market, not to offer help facilitating Oracle's purchase of Sun Microsystems, which is being held up by a European antitrust review. The editorial was based on a letter sent to Ellison on Sept. 15 by SAP CEO Léo Apotheker, which consisted of the following statement, according to the Journal: "As you know, we have significant concerns about Oracle's proposed takeover of Sun. The statement follows a recent Wall Street Journal editorial that speculated about the latter possibility. We renew our invitation to meet to attempt to resolve our concerns and other open issues between our companies.

SAP "strongly rejects" the editorial's "misleading speculation," Wednesday's statement said, reiterating remarks by an SAP spokesman earlier this week. Please let us know if and when you would like to meet." The Journal noted that "other issues" between the two companies include an ongoing intellectual property lawsuit Oracle filed against SAP in connection with TomorrowNow, a now-shuttered subsidiary of SAP that provided third-party support for Oracle applications. Instead, SAP has "concerns about customer choice in the database market and the future open licensing of Java," and first contacted Oracle and Sun about the matter "as far back as the end of July 2009." "Since there was no response, our CEO Léo Apotheker took the initiative and wrote to both Oracle and Sun CEOs in the middle of September to voice our concerns again, offer a dialogue, and attempt to clarify the issues. Meanwhile, this week the European Commission issued a formal statement of objections to Oracle and Sun regarding the merger. We have not heard back from Oracle, but instead found Léo Apotheker's letter leaked to the press last week," the statement adds. "This is both telling and disappointing as it demonstrates that there is no real interest by Oracle to listen and explain how it wants to ensure the required level of customer choice in the database market as well as open access to Java." In a blog post on Monday, SAP CTO Vishal Sikka also called for more openness in Java.

The body is particularly concerned over the fate of Sun's open-source MySQL database if it comes under Oracle's ownership. An Oracle spokeswoman declined comment.

The European Space Agency wants volunteers to take the 520-day trip to Mars. Starting in 2010, an international crew of six will simulate a 520-day round-trip to Mars, including a 30-day stay on the Martian surface. Well ok, a simulated version of the red planet voyage but you would get to go to Moscow and pretend you were on a spaceship. The 'mission' is part of the Mars500 program being conducted by ESA and Russia's Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) to study human psychological, medical and physical capabilities and limitations in space through fundamental and operational research.

For the surface exploration, half of the crew will move to the facility's Martian simulation module and the hatch to the rest of the facility will be closed, ESA stated. NetworkWorld Extra: 10 NASA space technologies that may never see the cosmosTop 10 cool satellite projects The crew will follow a program designed to simulate a 250-day journey to Mars, a 30-day surface exploration phase and 240 days travelling back to Earth. The reason for such research? When contemplating missions beyond Low Earth Orbit, such as to the Moon and Mars, daily crew life and operational capabilities may be affected by the hazardous space environment, the need for full autonomy and resourcefulness, the isolation, the interaction with fellow crewmembers and other aspects, the ESA stated. When preparing for long-duration space missions beyond the six month range currently undertaken by Expedition crews on the International Space Station (ISS), medical and psychological aspects become an issue of major importance.

Potential Mars explorers should be 20-50 years old, motivated, in good health and no taller than 6ft. Candidates must have a background and work experience in medicine, biology, life support systems engineering, computer engineering, electronic engineering or mechanical engineering, the ESA stated. They should speak one of the working languages: English and Russian. Except for weightlessness and radiation, the simulations will be as close to a real Mars mission as possible including: • The crew will live and work in a facility in Moscow, which has been specifically designed for the needs of these simulations. Additionally, private communication to family and friends will be limited comparable to a spaceflight situation.• During work time the crew will conduct scientific experiments, perform physical exercise, as well as tasks related to maintenance of the facility, life support system control and maintenance, sanitary and hygienic procedures Selection will be based on education, professional experience, medical fitness and social habits.

The facility comprises a medical module: it will accommodate up to 2 crewmembers in case of illness, and has equipment for routine medical and laboratory investigations; living quarters with 6 individual compartments; a kitchen-dining room, living room and a toilet; a Mars landing module, which will only be used during the 30 day Mars orbiting phase and; a storage module containing food supplies, an experimental greenhouse, sauna and gym.• Nutrition and hygiene of the crewmembers will be comparable to that on-board the ISS, i.e. food will be predefined and carefully rationed, there will be no shower, smoking and consumption of alcoholic beverages will not be allowed.• The crew will largely be autonomous, which will be expressed in independent decision-making, control of the environmental situation and of consumable resources, to name a few.• A signal passage delay of up to 20 minutes one-way during communication of the crew and the ground-based control center will be gradually built in with the aim of simulating a real interplanetary mission. Following an initial assessment, potential candidates will have to submit results from medical tests and will then be invited for interview, to be screened in a process similar to that used in astronaut selection. You have to be a citizen of ESA Member States meaning: Austria, Belgium, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Spain, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Norway, The Netherlands, Sweden and Canada. The kicker?

IBM's lawyers have a busy winter ahead of them as Big Blue attempts to fight off antitrust accusations related to its mainframe business and an IBM employee faces allegations of insider trading. Moffat, the head of IBM's Systems and Technology Group, was placed on a leave of absence. Biggest tech crime stories The U.S. Department of Justice has issued formal requests for information related to a complaint lodged by the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) about IBM's actions in the mainframe market, as the IDG News Service reported Oct. 8. In a separate incident, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week charged IBM executive Robert Moffat with insider trading.

Big Blue will suffer a blow to its reputation, but ultimately survive these legal problems, says Bob Djurdjevic, a longtime industry analyst who founded Annex Research in 1978, and was an IBM employee for eight years performing technical, sales and management functions. "If there's any company that's always been a model of pristine behavior, being above it all, it was IBM," Djurdjevic says. "I don't think it will have an effect on IBM's business because it has deep talent. Out of the three, the insider trading allegation "probably hurt the most," he writes. However, it is a black eye to IBM's reputation." Djurdjevic writes that IBM is dealing with "triple trouble," referring to the two legal incidents and a beating taken by IBM stock. According to the IDG News Service, "Moffat allegedly provided insider information when IBM was considering acquiring Sun Microsystems to Danielle Chiesi, a portfolio manager at New York-based New Castle Funds. Oct. 16 may go down as a "Black Friday" in IBM history, he says. "When this writer worked for IBM in the 1970s, we had to be holier than thou," he writes. "No disparaging of competition. Chiesi allegedly made trades on behalf of New Castle Funds based on the tips and generated about $1 million in illegal profits." Djurdjevic notes that "accused doesn't mean convicted," but he writes about what seems to be a negative shift in IBM culture.

No special deals. No longer. Selling only at list prices. … Being lily white and pure as mountain spring water was ingrained as part of the Big Blue culture. Not after what Bob Moffat, senior IBM vice president in charge of all of company's hardware, has been accused of doing - passing proprietary company information to his Wall Street co-conspirators for personal gains." As for IBM's mainframe problem, the company is accused of refusing to issue licenses for its z/OS mainframe operating system to competitors. IT analyst Joe Clabby criticizes the CCIA complaint in an article titled "Mainframe Monopoly?" for a weekly newsletter issued by the Pund-IT research firm.

The CCIA trade group says this alleged tactic is limiting competition and preventing mainframe customers from finding less expensive alternatives. One could argue that IBM does have a monopoly, owning more than 90% market share in the mainframe world, Clabby writes. Even if IBM has a monopoly, that doesn't automatically make the company guilty of anti-competitive behavior, Clabby continues. "Ultimately, the biggest question on the table is whether other vendors should have a right to deploy z/OS on other platforms," Clabby writes. "If allowed to do so, competing vendors could undermine IBM's mainframe pricing structure by delivering lower-cost alternatives to mainframe hardware. But a mainframe is a type of server, and "mainframes represent only .03% of the server market by volume," he notes. And, to us, that would be unfair." The Department of Justice has not commented on the complaint, so it's difficult to tell when it will be resolved.

Moffat was one of six people charged with insider trading, a group that included an Intel executive, and there could be more arrests coming. The Moffat case could be tied up in the court system for months or years, as is typical with large criminal investigations. IBM continued on its usual path this week, announcing software for management of virtual servers and a desktop package to compete against Microsoft's Windows 7. Whether Big Blue's legal troubles bring any long-lasting harm to the company remains to be seen. Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jbrodkin

Among a slew of online cybercrime forums, Pay-Per-Install.org stands out as a malware flea market where shadowy pushers of Trojan downloaders and tools for evading detection are bargaining with thousands of would-be "affiliates" willing to compromise victims' computers globally and get paid for it. Those who do the dirty work are paid $140 for every 1,000 U.S. computers they seed with bits of malware, to ready these victims' computers for other types of criminal assaults such as stealing financial data, sending spam or pushing fake antivirus software. Top dollar goes to anyone who can compromise computers in the United States.

The pay-per-install rate drops to $110 per 1,000 computers in the United Kingdom; $60 in Italy; $30 in France and just $6 in Asia. The online forum encompasses about 10 distinct entities, such as TrafCash.com and earning4u.com (believed since August to be the new name of InstallsCash), angling for affiliates to do their dirty work to take control of computers they can exploit. "They don't want infection of Russian computers," Stevens says. Curiously, Russia and several of Russia's neighbors, such as Belarus and Ukraine, are considered off limits.  America's 10 Most Wanted Botnets "They will not pay for installs in Russia or former Soviet Bloc countries," says Kevin Stevens, a researcher at SecureWorks, which recently issued a report delving into the malware bargaining that goes on at Pay-Per-Install.org. Some rogue antivirus software even has an installer component that checks to see if a user has visited sites such as Google.ru (the Russian-language Google site) or vkontackte.ru, and if so will exit immediately. In addition, the earning4u site, which is among the most notorious, has a Russian IP address. Many researchers suspect Russian-speaking kingpins to be the key players at Pay-Per-Install.org, where forum discussions go on in both Russian and English.

There's plenty of speculation why big-time malware pushers such as earning4u.com wouldn't want to mess with computers owned by Russians or in countries bordering Russia where many ethnic Russians reside. It's only in the past couple of years that Pay-Per-Install.org has emerged as what's perhaps the biggest of the crimeware forums, Chien says. But the most likely explanation is one put forward by Benjamin Edelman, assistant professor at Harvard Business School in its negotiations, organizations and markets unit. "Why would Russian law enforcement want to pursue attacks that never hurt Russians?" Edelman says. "By declining to hurt people in their own country, they discourage law enforcement from pursuing them." Crimeware forums flourish Geographic motivations aside, it's the contentious marketplace at Pay-Per-Install.org - where thousands of affiliates demand to be paid or brag about numbers of computers infected - that draws the main interest from security researchers. "The hot thing now is rogue antivirus software,'" says Eric Chien, technical director at Symantec's security technology and response division. "It pops up and says you're infected, convincing users to go pay $70 to get de-infected." Most of the code writers for the pay-per-install sites are believed to be based in Eastern Europe or Russia, Chien says. The site has been around for at least five years, and early on it catered to the adware industry. But that era of quasi-legitimate software is largely gone, replaced with blatant crimeware designed to steal and deceive to make a buck. Though adware is widely detested, its propagandists made some defense of legitimacy.

Today, Pay-Per-Install.org is "a primary way that people get malware," Chien says, noting a large number of major threats, such as Virut and Vundo, originated as pay-per-install programs. The affiliates get paid via payment methods that include e-gold, WebMoney, PayPal, Fethard, Western Union, MoneyGram, Anelik and ePassporte. The malware pushers at Pay-Per-Install.org keep track of ever-changing numbers of computers under control, which call home to report on successful installations. It's known that affiliates use a variety of methods to get malware installed on each victim's machine, which include exploiting peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent and eMule. Pay-Per-Install.org., to encourage its affiliates, offers guidance on how to use a "seedbox," a dedicated server to upload and download digital files to spread the malware since peer-to-peer sites try to keep malware out of their networks. Pay-per-install affiliates might bind a malicious file to a legitimate program and upload the bundled file, with the goal to have computer users download the malicious bundled file and execute it, SecureWorks points out.

Other means, including malicious downloads from compromised Web sites, are evidence of spreading pay-per-install malware. Malware pushers also sell crimeware applications called crypters that can be used to hide malicious code once it's on victimized computers. This could be done by outside attackers or rogue insiders. One example is PXCrypter, which costs $75 and includes one "stub," which is available to perform the decryption; additional stubs cost $25. Pay-per-Install.org has a Trojan downloader for sale called SDdownloader or Silent Downloader, which normally costs $300, but is on sale now for $225. The download managers let attackers infect a computer and force it to download and install any pay-per-install malware upon command. Tools such as XRumer can announce an attacker's Web site by posting messages about it wherever possible online. And in the twisted business world of Pay-Per-Install.org, scammers also make use of what's called "black hat search-engine optimization" to direct traffic to their sites that host malicious code.

Another method is to use "doorway pages," which are Web pages that list many keywords in an attempt to increase the search-engine ranking, according to SecureWorks. Only a determined effort to stop the people behind them will have any impact, Chien points out, as they can move apparatus like domain names around to so-called "bulletproof hosting," or rogue providers that will look the other way. So far, the international crimeware pay-per-install rings have gone largely unchecked, many say.