ShadowRAM: November 1, 2004

If the Red Sox can do the impossible, which they demonstrated amply over the past three weeks, that must mean there's hope for the Cubbies. Right? Right?!

The new sports prediction making the rounds is the "as the Redskins go, so goes the nation" game plan. This theory holds that the last Washington Redskins home game before a presidential election is a near-foolproof indicator of who will win the race. If the Skins win, so does the incumbent. If the opponent wins, the challenger's in like Flynn. This weekend's opponent is Green Bay, and some bloggers opine that with the way the Packers have been faring, it'll be a Bush landslide. (BTW, this Redskins rule goes back to 1936.)

Security rivals McAfee and Symantec must be feeling less secure than they let on. Word has it that Symantec's stock has one foot in the downgrade category because folks think the company's running out of innovative ideas on the business product front. "They've stalled, and everything to them is consumer AV revenue," one trader said, citing 63 percent growth in Symantec's consumer AV revenue, which accounted for more than half its earnings last quarter. Maybe that's why Symantec made up a new business product sales pitch, substituting "integrity" for "security."

McAfee execs, meanwhile, say they see a rosy future as a refurbished friend of the channel—but even they admit similar past efforts floundered. Maybe that's why they continue to sell almost everything direct through Digital River.

BitDefender is coming! BitDefender is—er, never mind. If you haven't heard of BitDefender before, now you may never. The anti-virus vendor with an installed base of more than 41 million home and corporate users in countries including South Africa and Korea opened offices in Boca Raton, Fla., with plans to take America by storm. But the home office back in Bucharest called off the attack, saying the effort just wasn't worth it. Employees in the Sunshine State were left scratching their heads and checking job listings.

Was former Ingram Micro prez Mike Grainger on the short list for CEO of Insight Enterprises? Grainger says it's inappropriate to comment, but there was lots of speculation about this last week after Insight appointed IBM veteran Richard Fennessy as its top dog. Grainger, recently named to the ScanSource board, said he's looking for positions on other executive boards.