And the company simply ignores the problem.

I am posting this for the benefit of those who do a Google search for ” vsmon.exe memory leak “, as well as anyone else considering the purchase of the Zone Alarms Pro software firewall.  This program, vsmon.exe, is the core engine of the firewall and in any of the 5.0 releases of ZA Pro, many users are experiencing diminished system performance as this program consumes system memory in huge quantities (typically several hundred MB and oftentimes on my Dell PC (3.2Hz Pentium, 1GB RAM,Windows XP Pro-SP2) it will exceed 500 MB.  It use to happen sporadically, but now occurs on a daily basis and often several times daily.  Every time it happens, I have to shutdown ZA Pro and restart it.

Emails to their tech support bring no response.  Innumerable posts to the company sponsored and maintained user forums from users experiencing the problem are consistently met with the same answers; either stop using P2P software, which they say causes the issue, or, do a clean reinstall of ZA Pro, or, drop back to an earlier version (e.g., the 4.5 release).  All of these responses are completely unacceptable, from my perspective.  I paid for a license of the 5.* release, not a 4.* release.  I use a P2P program to sync files on three PCs, which is far more important to me than the continued use of ZA Pro.  Finally, the re-installs are a waste of time.  I’ve tried them repeatedly to no avail.

There
is no reason for Zone Alarm users to take Zone Labs’ (the company which develops and sells the software) support
personnel seriously when they repeatedly ignore this critical problem with their software.  The “memory leak” is no longer an
annoying “feature”; it  now  impairs the software’s usability. Unfortunately, no one is stepping up to be accountable for resolving the malfunctioning code.  The
fact that no moderator/support personnel will even acknowledge the
reality of their customers’ experience, as repeatedly described in the user forums, speaks volumes about this
company’s value system, as well as its management.

At this point, I will fix the problem myself by uninstalling Zone Alarm Pro, for the last time, ever!  I will find another software firewall – there are lots of them available (i.e., it’s a commodity) and soon enough the one included in Windows XPSP2 will include all the functionality needed in a firewall (although it does not currently).

Finally, I am writing about my experience with the Zone Alarm Pro product and Zone Labs, the software company (now owned by Check Point), to exemplify the power of blogging (which was the original, primary theme of The New Ground Blog).  Although my one post will not be sufficient to change anyone’s behavior, if other users also publicize their dissatisfaction, then anyone else experiencing the problem and searching the web for a solution will find our posts.  Likewise, prospective purchasers researching the software will also be forewarned.  Finally, the message might get through to someone at Check Point who cares and who can do something about the problem.  Members of Check Point’s board of directors, perhaps?  Significant shareholders?  Check Point CEO or CTO,  maybe?  Someone at this company should be listening (or searching)!

In spite of being an ardent free market propronent and a believer that less government is better than more, I am beyond beginning to believe, although not yet completely sure, that government would be the best WiFi provider. And I should add that maybe, maybe that could also be true for the physical wired network infrastructure (fiber-to-the-home/business) as well.

Should WiFi Be Public Infrastructure? (continued)
I hate logging in to all of these various hot spots. Each one has a different login, a different account, and the process is one big hassle.
I’ve begged for better wifi roaming and I’ve wondered if Wifi should be public infrastructure.
Yesterday, a reader sent me a link to this story about a silicon valley firm called AnchorFree that is putting up free hotspots that are sponsor supported.
That’s a lot better than the paid hotspots we have now, but what I really want is free Wifi everywhere. Or at least let me pay a monthly bill to someone and then get free wifi everywhere I go without having to deal with different vendors with different payment schemes and different login systems.
This is only going to become more important as we get wifi voip phones, wifi iPods with podcasting built in, wifi cameras, and wifi video.
I honestly believe that the cost of supporting public wifi is not that expensive and the benefits to the citizens of every city that does it is enormous.
UPDATE: A great post on the comparisons between public water projects in the 19th century and wifi today. It’s a very interesting read.

Fred Wilson comments on a journalist’s observation that we are about to enter "the most furious investing cycle in history" due to the vast amounts of cash raised by VC funds in 1999-2000 that their partnership agreements require them to soon use (invest) or lose (return to limited partners along with management fees that pay their salaries and expenses).

It is true that there is a huge "overhang" of venture money left over from the 1999/2000 fundraising binge. But that money can’t go into early stage deals because those deals take 5-6 years to turn into realizations. So this "overhang" is going into later stage deals. Look at $75 million going into Fastclick or $108 million going into Webroot. That’s where the overhang money is going to go. The early stage market may also be entering a "furious investing cycle" but that’s not being driven by the overhang from 1999/2000, its being driven by Web 2.0 and the realization that we have entered another wave of innovation around the Internet that will result in a lot of interesting companies being created, built, and sold over the next several years.

I just love this – The Daily Brief: Just Because No One Understands You Doesn’t Mean You’re An Artist! ? It’s Good to Know Leadership Gets It – Four star general ORDERS his subordinates to stay out of the way of troops providing answers to questions he POSTS ON HIS BLOG! (I even coined a new category for it – Bureaucracy Busters!)

Commander’s Call was yesterday. The boss was getting us all together in groups, civilians, Senior NCOs, Junior NCOs, Officers, etc.. Two things that stuck out in my mind: He noted that there were not enough chairs for the civilians and they were packed out into the hallways surrounding the ballroom and that we SNCOs had a LOT of empty chairs. He shook his head and said, “I’ve GOT to get that mix changed.” As he was talking up his Command and Control Blog (you couldn’t get to it even if I did link to it), he made one of the most astounding, outside the box statements I’ve ever heard come out of a flag officer’s mouth. Other than giving me some leeway for perhaps not having the order he said them right, this is what I heard yesterday. Anyone else who was there and can make it clearer, please do: “The metric is what the person has to contribute, not the person’s rank, age, or level of experience. If they have the answer, I want the answer. When I post a question on my blog, I expect the person with the answer to post back. I do not expect the person with the answer to run it through you, your OIC, the branch chief, the exec, the Division Chief and then get the garbled answer back before he or she posts it for me. The Napoleonic Code and Netcentric Collaboration cannot exist in the same space and time. It’s YOUR job to make sure I get my answers and then if they get it wrong or they could have got it righter, then you guide them toward a better way…but do not get in their way.”

JAMES E. CARTWRIGHT
General, USMC
Commander, USSTRATCOM

Just how cool is that?

See this link for history of the celebration and details on others’ plans to celebrate.

In keeping with The New Ground’s basic paradigm of Internet disruption, Techdirt asks – Does The Wall Street Journal Risk Becoming Irrelevant?.

Does The Wall Street Journal Risk Becoming Irrelevant?
Predictions Contributed by Mike on Thursday, February 24th, 2005 @ 03:04AM
from the learn-to-play-online dept.
Last year, Adam Penenberg knocked the NY Times for becoming increasingly irrelevant in an online world. By locking up their archives, they made it difficult to be found in Google — and in an online world, if you’re not found on Google, you barely exist. If that was bad, things may be much worse for the Wall Street Journal, according to Penenberg. We’ve covered this issue before. Many people are giving up on the Wall Street Journal, in part because they can’t link to the stories. In an online world where many people feel that sharing the news is as important (if not more important) than reading it, this makes the Wall Street Journal useless. While the Journal has been able to coast by on its (well deserved) reputation, Penenberg points out that the younger generation that’s being raised online has other options. The Wall Street Journal’s strategy works in a world where there aren’t other options, and everyone learns that to get the day’s business news you go to the WSJ. It’s a strategy for the status quo. However, it’s not a strategy for bringing on new readers when those new readers are already overwhelmed by news everywhere they look. So, while the WSJ’s strategy may be able to last for some time, it’s going to increasingly come under pressure — which is why Penenberg suggests they throw up the doors now. Of course, it’s unlikely the Journal will listen. Instead, they’re trying to do things like start a weekend paper edition — because what we all want in our lives these days is more paper.

Burnhams’ Beat describes The Death of Compiled Applications:

Data was the first and most logical component piece to be pulled out of applications and from that a giant industry was created, databases.  Later, client-server architectures broke applications into muliple pieces and separated applications functions, but they didn’t actually pull a lot of functionality out of compiled code.  With the birth of the web though, applications started to change dramatically.

The web browser changed applications forever by substituting a generic GUI front-end and structured text (in the form of HTML) for a compiled GUI.  In this way the browser became merely a generic execution engine.  It requested non-compiled text and then translated that text into a unique GUI according to a pre-existing industry standard.  By pulling out the presentation logic from compiled apps and making it open and accessible to not only other programmers but basically anyone who could view text, browsers launched the massive wave of innovation and creativity that in turn made the Internet a true “web”.  HTML “programmers” swapped HTML tricks and tips liberally.  They cut and pasted code from each other’s sites and as time progressed they began to use the power of HTML and HTTP to create composite sites that actually borrowed both content and styles from other sites.

Thus, in just 10 years, the presentation layer of the web has become an incredible laboratory for innovation and creativity with people using the power of HTML’s accessibility and portability to create radical new services, many of which people simply had not thought possible beforehand.

While wandering the Web, I stumbled across a company, Prime Revenue, that offers to optimize the "financial supply chain" of its customers. 

PrimeRevenue is the key to a financially optimized supply chain.  For Buyers and Suppliers.

Our program is an innovative and unparalleled solution that brings the benefits of information technology to the financial supply chain.  Our services deliver greater working capital efficiency, cost savings, and revenue growth opportunities for both Buyers and Suppliers.

With our program, Buyers provide Suppliers with transaction visibility and payment certainty around trade payables to their Suppliers, reducing the amount of cash tied up in the order-to-cash cycle.  Our services streamline AR/AP processes, link the flow of funds to the flow of transaction data and, by creating visibility into future cash flows, give corporations access to a variety of transaction level financing options at very attractive rates.

Simply stated, PrimeRevenue helps companies do more business with less working capital.

Although apparently not a new concept (there’s a link on their website
to a fairly sophisticated vision of it in an article written in 2000),
the integrated communications and software infrastructure for implementing it are
only now reaching the maturation to support it.

On another Web sojourn, I encountered Wells Fargo’s Commercial Electronic Office (CEO), a proprietary financial portal that claims to provide "cash management, credit, international, and trust and investment services all in once place with a single sign on".  Maybe so, but my experience with banks suggest that would be something of a stretch.  (Wells had even applied bankers’ bureaucratese to the term e-commerce, turning a concise word into a mouthful of multi-syllabic mush.)  My instincts and experience with online media content tell me that a proprietary business model will not stand.  For the same underlying economic reasons that it would make no sense for Yahoo, MSN or AOL to limit their available market to that of one communications company (as in cable or telco), it would make no sense for a true financial portal to limit its market to the available market of a given depository institution (even if owned by that institution). 

This is worthy of futher "focused" Web wanderings, thought and conversation.