Jim Finkle

(Update: Dell PR misspoke about Johnson's responsibilities, and we've made changes below as indicated.)

Dell, which announced plans to buy Perot Systems for $3.9 billion on Monday, completed the deal without help from an executive in charge of mergers and acquisitions.

It's a touchy subject for Dell, which earlier this year named David Johnson to its executive team, poaching him from IBM where he served as head of M&A. IBM filed a lawsuit, saying that Johnson violated a non-compete agreement by taking the job with Dell. But IBM failed to persuade a judge to bar Johnson from working at Dell while the litigation is pending.

CEO Michael Dell told reporters on a conference call that Johnson was not involved in the Perot transaction "in any way," noting that the two companies had held discussions back in 2007, while Johnson was still at IBM. "It was not a new idea," Dell said.  But the discussions heated up again over the summer, after Johnson joined Dell.

Reuters asked Dell spokesman David Frink how Dell could negotiate a $3.9 billion deal, its biggest ever, without involvement from Johnson, its head of M&A. He said that Michael Dell and Chief Financial Officer Brian Gladden had led a group of other executives who worked on the deal.

He added: "We don't have a head of M&A."

When asked what Johnson does for Dell, Frink said: "We don't spending a lot of time talking about what he is focused on"

What is his title? "Head of corporate planning and development," Frink said.

Does that area include M&A? "Yes."

Frink initially said Johnson's job included M&A, but he called back later to say Johnson had no such responsibility. The M&A group reports to Chief Financial Officer Gladden, he added. There still is no head of M&A.

     Tom Siebel, the billionaire technology industry veteran, was seriously hurt during a recent trip to Africa but has returned to the United States and says he is "fine." 
    "I got pretty banged up...I have a really badly broken leg," he said in an email.
    "I'm fine. Back now and working online," he added.
    Siebel made a name for himself in the 1990s when he quit Oracle Corp to open Siebel Systems, a company that pioneered customer relationship management, or CRM, software.  Siebel flourished and quickly became a thorn in the side of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, who tried and failed to develop a successful CRM package of his own. 
    Ellison eventually bought Siebel's company.
    Forbes magazine ranks Siebel as one of the world's 500 richest men, estimating his worth at about $1.5 billion.
    Siebel is now chairman of First Virtual Group in Palo Alto, California, a holding company with interests in commercial property, investment management and philanthropy.

YouTube is becoming a dangerous place to search for porn.

Anti-virus company PandaLabs reports on its research blog that hackers have riddled the site with links to malicious software. The scheme works like this: Porn seekers searching the YouTube site for terms including Latina, kinky, girl, porn, sex and the names of popular porn stars are directed to another site, called PornTube 2.0. It looks like a legitimate video web site, according to PandaLabs, but is actually riddled with malicious software that can steal credit card data, passwords, install spyware and also attempts to sell users of infected PCs fake anti-virus programs.

Just so you know...

Sehat Sutardja, the CEO of chipmaker Marvell, doesn't have much respect for digital picture frames. "It comes with a dumb processor -- a really, really dumb and stupid processor,"  Marvell's founder said while speaking at the Reuters Summit on Monday.

Sutardja is not dumb. He is an engineer who claims an impressive 154 patents. He is also co-founder of Marvell, which sells computer chips that make devices like the iPhone and BlackBerry "smart".

He told Reuters that he wants to start selling similar chips to companies that that make digital picture frames. Adding features like video games, Web browsing, e-book readers and scrolling stock prices.  "You already pay for the nice screen, the box, shipping, the power supply," he said. "The difference is just the CPU that you need to put in that box."

Electronics makers are already sampling Marvell's "smart" chips now for picture frames and Sutardja says that they could have new products on store shevles within a year."We don't know when they will hit -- whether it will be Christmas or Mother's Day."

(Picture: Reuters)

Web-based software maker Salesforce.com has a new slogan.

The company's brash founder, Marc Benioff, built a software business that generates more than $1 billion in annual revenue based on a slogan that makes you wonder if he is in the right business: "The end of software." (He argued that he sells a service that customers access over the Web, not the traditional kind of software that companies install on their own computers.)

On Tuesday, Benioff rolled out a new slogan.

"It's time to open up a new front in "The End of Software"-- one that is long overdue," Benioff said in an email to managers at the 10-year old company. "It's time for The End of Maintenance."

Salesforce is now going after the maintenance fees that the software industry has long charged for updates and bug fixes. With such costs ranging from 20 percent to 25 percent of the original price of the software, Benioff points out that means customers are paying for their software all over again every four or five years. For Salesforce and "software as a service" peers like NetSuite, Workday, SuccessFactors and RightNow, they don't charge charge maintenance fees as all costs are included in subscription fees.

(Reuters photo: Benioff (R), along with musician Neil Young (C) and his business partner Jonathan Goodwin (L), displays a 1959 Lincoln Continental Mark IV that runs on electricity and natural gas during Salesforce.com's Dreamforce conference in San Francisco, California on November 3, 2008)

Silicon Valley billionaire Larry Ellison shed a little sunshine on "cloud computing" on Thursday at a financial analyst meeting held by Oracle Corp, the software company that he founded and runs (when he's not making into the headlines for his more nautical pursuits).

We've redefined 'cloud computing' to include everything we currently do. So it has already achieved dominance in the industry. I can't think of anything that isn't cloud computing.

The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion. Cloud Computing. I remember I was reading W and I read that orange is the new pink. And cloud is the new SaaS. (Software as a Service) Or cloud is the new virtualization. It is the most nonsensical. I mean I read these articles ... I have no idea what anybody is talking about. I mean it is really just complete gibberish.

What is it? What is it? ... Is it - 'Oh, I am going to access data on a server on the Internet.' That is cloud computing?

Then there is a definition: What is cloud computing? It is using a computer that is out there. That is one of the definitions:  'That is out there.' These people who are writing this crap are out there. They are insane. I mean it is the stupidest.

And he wasn't done yet: "When is this idiocy going to stop?" And "What the hell is cloud computing?" followed. And then this:

We'll make cloud computing announcements because if orange is the new pink, we'll make orange... Okay fine, we'll do some cloud. Maybe we'll do an ad. I don't know what we'll do differently in light of cloud computing other than change the wording on some of our ads. It's crazy. So that's my view.

Still lost in the clouds?

Online recruitment site Monster.com waited five days to tell its 1.3 million customers about a security breach that resulted in the theft of confidential information.

Patrick W. Manzo, vice president of compliance and fraud prevention, told Reuters late on Thursday, the company needed the time to properly assess the scope of the breach and to solve the problem before alarming users. Manzo discusses Monster.com's security strategy: 

How did they get into your system?
What they do is they have a credential - a legitimate credential that they have pilfered somehow. go into the database and download the resumes.Actually I should clarify.  The data we are talking about here was really directory data: name, address, telephone number, email address. We have examined all the data that was on the server and we have not seen entire resumes.  We have just seen that directory data.
 
Was your security too lax?
There is not going to be any security method that's bullet proof. The security we had in place was a user name and a password. That is a very common security method and it is used by banks. It is used by most other Internet companies. In this case the security method wasn't defeated. Nobody cracked the password. Nobody broke through the front gates here. We have a system that's like a lock with a key and somebody had the key. They got the key from the legitimate customers.  
 
How many credentials did they use? 
We believe it was a very limited number.

Have you begun a rigorous review of your security system. Are you talking steps to beef things up? 
The answer to your question is yes. But that's not something that's necessarily new.  It's something that in light of the current situation we are going to make a top priority. 
 
Have people pulled their resumes from your site?
Jim I don't think they should be concerned about their resumes. The key fact is to be vigilant and to be on the lookout. ...Phishing and these issues are not unique to online recruiting. I'm sure your email box has its fair share of spam and strange messages from banks and these sorts of things . I know mine certainly does. 
 
Yes. but I hope those spammers didn't get my contact information by breaking into an Internet company like Yahoo or Google and getting data from my accounts with them. 
I understand. People's concern with privacy is very important and we take that very very seriously.   I think it's also important to keep in context the type of information we're talking about here. It's a name. It's an address. It's a telephone number. Most people have that published in the phone book. In addition there is an email address, which i think most people expose to the public when they use it. That's not to say we don't take this seriously. We absolutely do. As I've said we are committed to having world class security. But it is important to emphasize  that we are not talking about the kind of information that really should cause concerns. We are not talking about social security numbers. We are not talking about credit cards. We are not talking about drivers license numbers.

Reuters recently interviewed Nicholas Negroponte, who runs the One Laptop Per Child project. The MIT researcher is not a fan of the telephone, so we spent several days catching up via an e-mail exchange, during which Negroponte said he has obtained the financial commitments he needs to begin producing some 3 million low-cost XO laptop computers in October.

Here are some excerpts from their conversation, which began with a question about the role that News Corp's Rupert Murdoch has played in the project:

"Rupert is long standing friend. We first met in the mid 1980s and had various working relationships. More recently I have come to know Wendi (Deng, Rupert's wife) and consider Rupert to be one of OLPC's Chief Strategists. I ask his advice all the time. He asks mine on matters related to computers and communications. I would like to think I have been an influence on his distinctly digital life these days."

Has he helped with fundraising?
"Yes. For example, he/we hosted a dinner at the World Economic Forum at the end of January."

Has he offered other types of assistance - in any form?
"For a short while Fox animation helped conceive a 3-D XO character, under the direction of UCLA Arts Professor Rebecca Allen. The overall idea was abandoned early on for practical reasons of not wanting to divert the laptop processing that would have been required and in favor of a fast and unencumbered boot up instead."

Any plans for News Corp to provide programming directly to the laptops or the schools?
"We have no special agreements with News Corp companies for content. But keep in mind that the XO is a general purpose laptop. It can also be a TV set, music player, games machine and other content consuming devices."

It could literally be hooked up to a video feed, DVD player, game machine like any other TV set?
"Yes. It has three USB ports and one SD slot, so it can be lots of things. Our people use it for wireless power point presentations, for example. The current build has Tetris and calculator, both trivial and (in this case) open source. We run Sesame Street, movies and the camera function is adored."

Are there are other philanthropists on board who you haven't talked about publicly?
"I have been in discussions with Carlos Slim, who is a friend dating back to 1995...
You can safely report that Carlos is backing this project. ...Nothing has been signed. It would be both in Mexico and regionally."

You told me you are working on a subsidy scheme. Can you elaborate?
"I cannot discuss the details, for obvious reasons. As you know, the current cost is $175. One way to get this to the poorest countries, and maybe even reward some of the early adopters, is to subsidize $75 each. This is my aspiration. It may become a reality in the coming days."

Are you actively selling the XO Laptop in the United States?
"We have engaged Eleven Inc. to help us. Actually engaged them two months ago knowing this might happen. We are in discussion with many people."
 

What do you mean by "many people"?
"Last time I counted, 19 governors had contacted OLPC. We have done very little in the USA. When I say I am talking to many people, it has been on the supply side, the Apples, Googles and Dells."

I don't know much about Eleven Inc. except what I learned from a quick look at their Web site. They appear to be an advertising and marketing firm in San Francisco. What are they doing to help you sell the XO in the U.S?
"They have been helping us explore aspects of the XO that we are not touching, from commercial to US school sales. Keeping in mind that two of their clients are Google and Apple, it is not surprising to have mutual interests. Just because we do not do something -- like attend to the commercial aspects of the XO -- does not mean the best in class should not be looking at it. So they have been helping and made a presentation to our Board last week."

There was a lot of controversy over last month's news that Microsoft is developing a version of Windows for the XO laptop, with your blessing.
"This is not news. Nobody paid attention before. We put an SD slot into the laptop at the end of last summer just for Microsoft to be able to run windows. It has been there for 10 months. Does having the Windows option help? It is classic: damned if you do and damned if you don't. The good news is that having the option is universally seen as good -- options are better than not having them and being locked into one. Meanwhile, some people in the Open Source community think I (NN more than OLPC) have sold out. Hard to win."

Last week the head of the One Laptop Per Child project told a group of analysts and reporters that the $176 computers it is developing for millions of poor kids can run on the Windows operating system.

That was surprising to hear from the mouth of OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte, a vocal Microsoft critic. The laptops are designed to run on the open-source Linux operating system (thanks to much technical assistance and financial aid from software vendor Red Hat Inc.)

He quickly qualified his remark, saying that he had never actually seen Windows running on one of his machines (which are scheduled to go into production in China in September, then be distributed to poor children around the globe).  Microsoft had asked him for a couple of the prototypes of the device, dubbed the XO laptop, and he had complied.

Reuters asked Microsoft what's going on with the laptops. Here's the e-mail response from Will Poole, corporate vice president of the software maker's market expansion group:

We have been engaged in dialog with Nicholas Negroponte and his team regarding the plans for OLPC for some time.  As part of our ongoing discussions, OLPC has provided us with a number of beta XOs.  With those in hand, we currently are in the process of evaluating the feasibility of running Windows on the XO device. 

While we are pleased with the progress to date, we still have significant work ahead to finalize our analysis and testing processes. 

Microsoft's cooperation hasn't been welcomed by everybody involved in the One Laptop project. It's not hard to forget that the world's biggest software maker is still viewed as the evil empire by much of the open source community.

Red Hat's Christopher Blizzard, a chief architect of the XO laptop, weighed in on Microsoft's involvement on his blog on Thursday afternoon:

The relationship can be explained thusly: Microsoft has some XO machines. They are trying to get Windows working on it. Sometimes they show up and ask random hardware questions. The OLPC guys say look at the code. They go away again.

Sometimes they brick machines (because they have to replace the awesome firmware we have with a poopy PC BIOS) and send them back to the office to get them unbricked. Sometimes they complain that the machine has hardware problems and we reply that it works fine here.

For once Microsoft is getting the reverse Linux laptop experience: little support and little documentation for the hardware. The result will be a platform that doesnt include any of the really novel features that were building in, bad power management, no systems management via the firmware and apps that will randomly crash because they cant fix the virtual memory problem in the same way were approaching it. A second class citizen, to be sure.

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has dealt a blow to the One Laptop Per Child Foundation's efforts to begin mass production of millions of notebook computers for poor children in developing countries around the globe.

Last year, as formal ties between the United States and Libya were restored, OLPC Foundation founder Nicholas Negroponte announced that Gaddafi had ordered 1.2 million of the devices, making him the non-profit group's first major customer.

Last week Nicholas Negroponte told Reuters in an exclusive interview that the Gaddafi Foundation had cut its order for the inexpensive laptops by 700,000 units to 500,000, possibly delaying the launch altogether.

Gaddafi's decision to more than halve his order means that Negroponte is scrambling for business in other countries around the globe. 

Negroponte didn't give a reason for the change. But the dropped order came as the laptop's price rose to $176 - from an original target of $100.

Nicholas wasn't the only Negroponte, who was disappointed by Gaddafi. Earlier this month his brother John, who is a U.S. deputy secretary of state, traveled to Libya as the highest-ranking American official to visit the country in half a century. But he left without meeting the Libyan leader.

Prior to his trip U.S. senators had urged Negroponte to hold Gaddafi responsible for "acts of terrorism" during his visit.

Without those 700,000 laptops, Negroponte estimates that only about 2.5 million orders will come in. (That's only an estimate because he won't formally start taking orders until next month). 

Economies of scale require Negroponte to produce at least 3 million of the devices in their first run. Otherwise he'll have to postpone their launch. So he said he's going to spend the next month traveling the globe trying to drum up business.

Negroponte said that one option would be to sell the laptops to impoverished school districts in the United States, reversing a policy that he'd never give American youngsters access to the devices. 

Here's an excerpt from the interview, which was conducted after an analyst briefing on the project. Transcripts of that briefing are available at the Website of OLPC News.
(Reuters coverage of the project)

Updates with links to Reuters coverage and OLPC News