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When reports began to roll in about the Seattle earthquake last week, the Kitty couldnt help but wonder whether the seismic vibrations were Gods way of trying to help the Feds break up Microsoft or if Gates had just dropped his wallet. El Gato hears there may be a whole lotta shakin goin on for beleaguered enterprise management software group Tivoli Systems. Its bad enough the company lost a lot of its original employees over the last 18 months, but a friend of the Furball said the rumor floating around Austin is that Tivoli may also lose its name. “I guess the IBM-ization of Tivoli would really be complete then,” groused the Grimalkin.
Another leg of IBM, Lotus, may soon be announcing a partnership with Ericsson to port Notes to wireless devices. Although Ericsson did not confirm the rumor, a Tabby tattler reports that a source close to Lotus claims that an announcement for the partnership was planned for Feb. 20, but for reasons unknown, it was postponed. According to the tipster, the teaming of the two companies makes sense when you consider that other companies, such as Siemens, have defected from the Microsoft camp.
At the big wireless conference in Cannes last month, Ericsson said it would like to expand its cooperation with Microsoft but is open to deals with other players.
A Katt crony informed the Furry One that SAS Institute is experiencing an executive exodus of sorts. The worlds largest privately held software company has, up till recently, boasted a 95 percent employee retention rate. But delayed plans for an IPO and a low corporate profile could explain the dissension.
The latest defector was Stephen Turner, the companys vice president of North American field operations, who left to join Allegis but not without first taking two directors with him. Turner oversaw SAS West Coast sales and service operations and was a member of the companys Presidents Club, a designation he won by beating his sales quota by 200 percent.
Turners departure comes on the heels of President and Chief Operating Officer Andre Boisvert, President of the Americas Marianna Suciu and Senior Director of Strategic Investments Stephen Wiehe all flying the coop earlier this year.
A reader of the Tawny Titan e-mailed El Gato after noticing that Spencers Litter box Lynx had mentioned that P2P applications like BearShare were being bandied about the Web as possible successors to Napster. The Furball fan was compelled to point out that P2P programs that allow a PCs ports to be open to full server mode can leave the PC open to big hack attacks and other nasty IP woes.
The readers warning arrived just as Spencer was investigating a worm called Mandragore that has been spreading across the Gnutella network.
According to anti-virus mavens at Kaspersky.com, shared files ending in .exe that are 8.2KB in size should be avoided. Once such a file is downloaded, the worm then hides in the Windows startup folder and automatically takes control of and remains in the system memory.
Although the worm itself isnt fatal, Kaspersky points out that the damage to the reputation of a company that cant repel the attack could be.