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IBM facing Anti-Trust case for its Monopoly over Mainframes

IBM is facing an investigation from Depatment of Justice (US) for its competition killing practices in Mainframe space. Earlier IBM used to license its Mainframe software to be run on Non IBM hardware, but sometime back IBM withdrew such offers and now completely dominates the hardware segment of Mainframes.

Also one more claim is that since many Major clients have written complex business code on Mainframes and IBM has made it very difficult to port these applications to another vendor say Oracle or Microsoft.

T3T a smaller company is pursuing a case against IBM in this regard but was rejected by the court recently. But now Justice department has taken the matter. Earlier Platform Solutions sued IBM but later was purchased by IBM and hence ending any chance of legal battle.

Now the Computer & Communication Industry Association (CCIA) which includes Oracle,Microsoft,Google ,Redhat among others has been asked to provide inputs on the investigation by Dept of Justice.

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US Internet Provider Comcast to warn users of Virus in their PC

Comcast, one of dominant US Cable Internet Providers is testing a new way of Virus Warning. When the ISP finds out that a computer is part of botnet/virus activity, Comcast will send popup messages to the user’s browser with a message about the presence of the Virus. The users will be provided a link to go to Comcast Anti-Virus Center and will be provided tips to solve their problem.

The message will be repeated every 7 days even if the user chooses to ignore the warnings. Also the advantage of this system is that this will work irrespective of whether user has a Antivirus software installed or not.This new method is to be tested from today and if successful will be launched in a larger scale soon.

It should be noted that most Non tech-savvy users never realise their computer has a Virus/Trojan Horse and inadvertantly helping the spread of them.