- Highlighting the hidden gems of 2007
- WordPerfect's defeat: Re-visiting an historic gripe
- IT's greenest year yet
- One last Windows Christmas wish
- The best and worst of '07
- Cringely's Christmas Carols
- InfoWorld Daily Podcast
- Six months later: A hard look at the iPhone
- Opposing view: Social media and the talent wars
- InfoWorld Daily Podcast
December 31, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Highlighting the hidden gems of 2007
Editor's blog: The top stories of 2007 may "make you glad to have a ringside seat on the technology industry," but as Editor in Chief Eric Knorr observes in this week's blog, InfoWorld is all about "spotting trends and analyzing events that other tech journalism outfits overlook." In the Top 10 underreported stories of 2007, "we've picked our sleepers carefully, with an eye toward stories we think will have lasting impact."
Blade servers: During the course of testing for InfoWorld's head-to-head comparison of three of the big four blade server vendors -- Dell, HP, and Sun (minus no-show IBM) -- "it became clear that the new crop of blade servers is a giant step up from the previous generation." Get the full story.
In the news: Microsoft is claiming that a data corruption bug in Windows Home Server crops up only when the system is under an "extreme load." Unsurprisingly, the news that Windows Home Server could corrupt files has raised a storm of criticism from customers and observers alike.
Posted by Caroline Craig on December 31, 2007 05:57 AM
December 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
WordPerfect's defeat: Re-visiting an historic gripe
Applications: It seems there are some gripes that readers just can't let go of. Ed Foster's Gripe Line re-examines one that is ancient history in terms of the technology world: Why did WordPerfect lose out to Microsoft Word? There is still plenty of debate whether "WordPerfect simply failed to compete or was a victim of Microsoft monopolistic practices." Some readers feel Lotus 1-2-3, WordPerfect, and others "were the leaders of the pack; Microsoft brought up the rear, then used FUD to crush them." But others are quick to point out that WordPerfect wasn't blameless in its defeat: ""WordPerfect ran into trouble when it did not move quickly into the Windows environment." Where do you weigh in on this historic argument?
Hardware: More than 2,000 consumer electronics companies will soon be fighting for the attention of 140,000 attendees at International CES. Before succombing to the hype and hoopla, visit this look back at the class of 2007 to see which predictions from last year's show were spot-on -- and which were way off the mark.
Posted by Caroline Craig on December 28, 2007 05:17 AM
December 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Sustainable IT: Although there are still miles to go, one thing about 2007 is certain: this year was greener, IT-wise, than the past. At least in recent history. "It seemed that just about everyone had green on the brain," Ted Samson relates in 2007: The year in green. "The impetus to be eco-friendly wasn't just tied to concern for our little blue-green planet. One of the obvious benefits for reducing energy waste is saving cash, be it in the form of lower electric bills or fewer dollars pumped into the gas tank." The looming datacenter power crunch came under the spotlight in the IT fray. And a jam-packed raft of vendors turned their eye toward greener IT, including: AMD, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and many, many others. "2008 will undoubtedly yield more technological innovations and internal efforts to save energy, cut waste, and reduce GHG emissions." Related: Out with the old -- what to do with unwanted tech gear (from Computerworld).
The feature well: Every company has them. Those bonehead end users and tech hacks, otherwise known as IT simpletons, that give us cause, and pause, to erupt into laughter. The year in IT idiocy includes bumbles that fit into categories such as stupid user tricks, IT horror stories or amazing tales of stupidity.
Careers: If you'll be looking for a new job in the New Year, Nick Corcodilos has some advice about How not to get hired. Don't be a "media hog who uses community environments to get noticed -- and nothing more." The opposite approach, of course, can help raise your profile, and for the right reasons. "It's simple: participate and contribute to your professional community without expecting to get anything in return. The more you do for the community you're in, the more you'll be recognized for the value you contribute." What's more, in a previous post, Who ya gonna call?, Corcidilos reveals some secrets to hunting for contacts, a practice that, he asserts, "ain't rocket science, but it does take patience, diligence, and a solid bit of diplomacy and respect."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 28, 2007 05:10 AM
December 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
One last Windows Christmas wish
Columnist's corner: No, he's not wishing for a brand-spankin' new PC loaded with Windows Vista. Well, not exactly. "All I want for Christmas is a faster Vista," Sean Gallagher writes in An Enterprise Windows Christmas Wish. "I'd personally rather see Vista succeed than fail." Where it stands now, Vista is not as ready for the enterprise as XP is and that doesn't seem to be changing any time fast. "So, please Mr. Ballmer: get a Vista SP2 out in 2008 that makes Vista less of a pig. And don't forget a quick cycle on Windows Server 2008's SP1 too. We've been good, really."
Wireless: Without expecting to even like the thing, Elizabeth Montalbano of the IDG News Service was handed an Apple iPhone some four months ago. "I'm still smitten," she confesses. "It's not just what the gadget does that makes it a life-changing device, it's HOW it does it -- and, more importantly, how it lets a user do it." The iPhone and me: A love story. "Unlike [my] ex-boyfriend, iPhone has never disappointed, and has so far been an unfailingly loyal and faithful companion. Since we're still in the honeymoon phase, I know there is much more to discover about the joys my new companion can bring to my life. It may be early to say, but I think my relationship with iPhone will turn out to be an affair to remember."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 27, 2007 04:48 AM
December 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Notes from the field: Once again the time has come to honor those tech companies who have made this past year so, umm, interesting. "As with last year, this year's Moonies (for Malicious Obnoxious Offensive or Nonsensical behavior) come with a handsome statuette of Steve Ballmer dropping trou in the general direction of the Googleplex," Cringe explains in The best (and worst) of 2007. The sweet turd of youth, Apple's crazed string of lawyer-fatigued lawsuits, and none other than IT's own dead-horse-beater, SCO. Those are just the worst, while the best ones get "a tip of the Cringe fedora for a job well done."
Video: Continuing the reflection, albeit less sardonically, the IDG News Service looks at the biggest tech news stories of this soon-to-be gone 2007 -- beginning with, you guessed it, the release of Windows Vista and Apple's Leopard. Apple wiggled its way in a secod time with the iPhone and then again when it dropped the price so soon after its initial release. Palm pulls the plug on Foleo, among others. Watch it here.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 26, 2007 07:08 AM
December 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
'Tis the day before Christmas so Cringely has this carol to offer...
Vista Wonderland (sung to the tune of "Winter Wonderland")
Laptop's on... is it frozen?
No that's just Windows loading
Your workday has stalled
Your PC now crawls
Working in a Vista Wonderland
iPod fails, needs new software
Microsoft -- why should they care?
You'll soon grow quite sick
Of confirming each click
Working in a Vista Wonderland
When there's trouble you'll call their support crew
And provide a credit card or two
You'll reach a technician named Narasu
And he'll help you to endlessly reboot
Later on, when you downgrade
Old XP will seem so great
And you will regret
The time that you spent
Working in a Vista Wonderland
While the rest of you chime in to Santa Claus is Coming to Town, the venerable Robert X. also sings The NSA is Comin' to Tap, and The Cringemass Song to the tune of, you guessed it, The Christmas Song. Cringe has his own personal choir.
Happy Holidays!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 24, 2007 05:10 AM
December 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
FCC approves the Google-DoubleClick deal, Red Hat's longtime CEO steps down, Microsoft gives Samba developers access to Windows secrets, Sharp and Toshiba discuss a flat-panel display alliance, and more 
LISTEN!
Posted by Caroline Craig on December 21, 2007 07:10 AM
December 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Six months later: A hard look at the iPhone
Video: Half-a-year after the most over-hyped product release in history, the time has come to take a look at what's good, and not so good, about Apple's iPhone. Kevin Railsback and Eric Hill do just that in the series Two geeks and iPhone. Is it really worth the price, and having to deal with Apple's restrictions? Part 1 looks at what they've actually used the phone for during the last six months. Safari is a gimme, but these two have different practices with the device. In Part 2, they share some of the tips and tricks they've picked up along the way for e-mail and browsing, neither of which is ideal on the iPhone. Tackling one of the thornier issues with the device, they show how to add third-party apps and work around some Apple-imposed limitations in Part 3.
Sustainable IT: If this stable of luminaries is even close to correct, 2008 will be a greener year than the last. "The flourishing world of green technology is driven by true need. Companies are running out of space and power in their datacenters, not to mention struggling with high energy costs," Ted Samson explains in IT leaders share green-tech predictions for 2008. Executives from AMD, Cisco, IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, SNIA, VMware and Yahoo, among others, contribute to the piece -- and to Samson's conclusion that "2008 is shaping up to be an eventful year for green IT, to say the least."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 21, 2007 04:38 AM
December 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Opposing view: Social media and the talent wars
Best of the blogs: To Lena West's idea that companies need social media to attract top talent, Nick Corcodilos fires back that it's not actually critical in that particular capacity. "What's necessary is integrity, credibility, and a focus on profit. Promote an indistinct notion of cool and you'll just have to hire real talent the next time," he argues. "As a reminder to any techie looking for work, It's about profit, Stupid. That's the first kind of cool that matters." Related: Lena West's Social Media and the talent wars.
The news beat: A Trojan horse bumps Google ads from Web pages placing, in their stead, advertisements from another source, security vendor BitDefender discovered. NetSuite sets the initial price of its stock at $26, up from the original estimate of $13-$16 per share. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission approves Google's acquisition of DoubleClick. And Software AG buys tools for modernizing mainframe applications from Jacada which, in turn, is shifting its focus toward call center systems.
Wireless: Given that no one these days wants to hold a bricklike cell phone or music player to their ear, Tom Yager throws in his recommendations for the best of the best Bluetooth headsets. Among the vendors in that category: BlueAnt and Plantronics. "The name recognition of BlueAnt may be low enough that buyers will mistake its ant-weight Bluetooth headsets and its Bluetooth speakerphone to be off-brand. BlueAnt is a technological heavyweight." As for Plantronics, Yager had this to say, the company "put a Bluetooth spin on top-shelf on-the-ear headphones, and they retain the flexibility to plug into wired sources through their 3.5mm headphone jacks." Finally, a wish for another year: If only these could act as hi-fi microphones for podcasting and the like, Yager dreams in ink.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 20, 2007 10:59 AM
December 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apache and Sun are out of sync as Harmony project moves forward, MS foreshadows IE 8, MIT students pedal-power supercomputer, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 20, 2007 07:46 AM
December 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The dark side of vendor relationship management
Best of the blogs: It's a topic nearly everyone in IT has to handle at some point, in fashions large or small, and it's always a matter of some concern: Vendor relationship management. As one reader explains, "it has to do with the ugly reality of vested interests and marginal or even improper relationships." You know the situation. Sporting event tickets, bogus training trips and the such. "My interest in the topic is the degree to which these types of actions prevent the IT organization from reaching its potential," the reader writes to Bob Lewis. Mr. Lewis answers that crawling into bed with a particular isn't necessarily wrong. "Given what it takes to make major changes to IT architecture, strong relationships with strategic providers make all sorts of sense." Vendor relationship management concerns. "IT execs cross the line when the relationship stops being businesslike and starts turning into obligatory perks. Whether solicited by a client or encouraged by a vendor, it generates conflicts of interest and is bad business."
Security: If you're planning to rollout last Tuesday's patches from Microsoft, heed this advice: Be sure to run a full test of IE on internal Web applications, Sean Gallagher explains. IE patch causes crashes. "You may get a rash of helpdesk calls from users confused about why their applications aren't working." Related news: IE, Gmail bugs allow hijacking of accounts.
The news beat: And again NetSuite raises the estimated price of its IPO, now expecting $19 to $22 per share in the auction, where earlier this week it hoped for $16-$19. The worm wiggling through Google's Orkut appears harmless but it does demonstrate the social networking site's vulnerability, as well as that of Web applications in general. And in something of a surprise, oil giant Chevron applies to the 700Mhz wireless spectrum auction, along with AT&T and Verizon.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 20, 2007 05:06 AM
December 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
How social media can help win the talent war
Best of the blogs: Hate it, love it, or a little bit of both, social media sets the imperative for all companies to compete for clients, customers and talent, Lena West asserts. "The tables have turned in more ways than one. Companies can no longer afford to compete on cash, bennies and perks. They need to be cool and hip -- or at the very least have a clue," West writes in Social media talent wars. "Companies that don't have a seat at the Internet's conversation table really are not part of the dialogue and good companies with bright futures are all too often being overlooked as potential employers."
From the InfoWorld Test Center: Taking a "unique and bold approach," Apple with its OS X Leopard Server brings a product that Tom Yager writes is "as easy to set up and run as a desktop." Yager adds in Leopard Server: The People's Unix that this latest incarnation "breaks from the previous Mac server -- and all server practices in general -- by placing a completely new emphasis on cutting edge network collaboration that includes blog, wiki, instant messaging, calendar and scheduling, and address book. Sure, that's a trick that Linux or Windows can pull off, but Apple's spin is unique." Related review: Mac OS X Leopard a perfect 10.
Careers: Counter-offers can be dangerous, particularly when you have another option in hand and try to pull one out of a current boss. "Sometimes, accepting a counter to stay works out," Nick Corcodilos writes in Is a counteroffer a death sentence? "But you must ask, if your boss matches the other offer and you stay, will he regard you suspiciously? Take the increase he gives you out of future raises? If your boss gives you a counter and you stay, there's no telling whether he will hold a grudge."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 19, 2007 10:40 AM
December 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
AT&T, Verizon and Chevron want to join Google in wireless spectrum bidding, MPAA wins case against TorrentSpy, Google working to plug hole in Toolbar, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 19, 2007 07:38 AM
December 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
In DRM world, customers have no rights
Gripe Line: Ed Foster kicks off his latest installment with a warning: this product contains DRM. "Shouldn't a vendor be required to inform customers that a product they're about to buy contains technology designed to disable it?" he asks. Thing is, the only U.S. laws relating to DRM are to prevent tampering with it. So Foster takes up the cause: "Instead of vendors and the politicians who serve them telling us not to touch the DRM, we need to send them a warning of our own -- those companies that use DRM do so at their peril."
Notes from the field: The fat lady may not be singing just yet, but Robert X. Cringely sure is belting out the saga of SCO vs. The World. Cringe's lil' diddy: SCO long, it's been bad to know ya. The latest in this open source wrinkle comes by way of reports indicating that the trial to determine damages -- as in what SCO has to pay Novell -- will come in January. "With any luck, the SCO farce will be just a bad memory by mid February."
Columnist's corner: Even though it seemed that IT's indirect sales was withering for a while there in lieu of e-commerce, Ephraim Schwartz espouses that the channel is making a comeback. "There is an obvious reversal of fortune," he writes, referring to Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and SAP, all announcing channel-related moves. One industry analyst says that everyone is waking up to the enormous opportunity. "At the same time there is an interesting change taking place among channel partners," Schwartz adds. Ultimately, even while products get simpler, the buying experience gets more complex.
Careers: Often when applying for a job prospective employers essentially demand salary history. But that doesn't mean you, as an applicant, have to provide it. Instead, professional headhunter Nick Corcodilos advises, Just say no to the salary question. Revealing your salary with intent to then negotiate, in fact, is akin to showing your poker cards, then playing out the round. "The game is already over because the other players have decided how much they're going to bet, based on your hand." You have more negotiating power when the company doesn't know salary history.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 19, 2007 04:44 AM
December 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
10 things to hope not to see in '08
Best of the blogs: Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Eric Schmidt declaring that the war is over and that they'll jointly develop all products moving forward -- that's merely the beginning of Ephraim Schwartz's list. Others unwanted events range from video ads to too many friends sending photos to him via cell phones, and it even includes one non-techie item regarding the next Super Bowl and all its hoopla. Oh yes, and Apple dropping the iPhone price again, "thus obligating the entire blogosphere, including me, to fill the world wide Web with millions of words of worthless commentary." Top 10 things I don't want to see happen in 2008.
Open source: Now that a bootable 4 GB Flash Drive boasting Mandriva is available, Martin Heller gives it a run. "The general idea is that you can take this little memory stick with you and be able to run Linux from it," Heller writes in this Strategic Developer post. Trying it on a new laptop and an old desktop, he found it worked on one system, albeit after configuration issues, but not on the other. The first of a few hurdles, of course, is getting the computer to boot from the flash drive. In the end, Heller notes, "it's a reasonable portable desktop system for casual Linux users, which might be more convenient than carrying around a Linux Live CD and a separate flash drive."
The news beat: The Apple patches keep on comin' with a new round fixing Mac OS X and a Safari beta, and marking the company's 35th and 36th updates this year. Sprint-Nextel names Dan Hesse as its new CEO; the former head of AT&T Wireless and Embarq replaces the resigning Gary Forsee. An Intel-backed group will receive a WiMax license in Japan, according to reports. And a presidential hopeful in Taiwan says he will push for looser tech-transfer, specifically referring to the exchange of chipmaking technology to China.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 18, 2007 10:37 AM
December 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Apple issues more security fixes, this time for Tiger, Leopard and Safari, an Intel-backed group will receive a license for WiMax in Japan, Symantec draws closer to Norton 360 beta, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 18, 2007 07:19 AM
December 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The motivations of busted botnet barons
Security: The FBI Bot Roast II operation snagged eight people who had committed a broad range of online crimes -- but, quite naturally, it did not reveal much beyond the nature of the activities. "When InfoWorld decided to dig a little deeper, we found that the motivations of each perpetrator were far richer, and the nature of the crimes more complex, than a simple rundown of their rap sheets could express," Andrew Brandt writes in True crime: The botnet barons. Take the Tacoma, WA man who gave an FBI agent access to a botnet which, it turns out, included an infected computer belonging to the Justice Department's Antitrust division. Another, Gregory King, was motivated by vengeance after Castlecpos deleted some of his message board posts. One more: Azizbek Mamadjanov, whose "crimes fall about as far to the fringe of what's considered a cybercrime as you can get -- in this case, it was clearly a fraud that was simply enabled by the use of stolen online banking information."
Careers: An edgy reader writes to Bob Lewis asking what to do when you've heard you're being replaced. Worse, the company has historically been known to send people packing, sans severance package, with a "Here's your last paycheck. Good-bye." The first thing to do is revisit the very nature of working for an employer. Next, be certain that what you've heard is not mere rumor. If you're positive, "quietly and discreetly start an intensive search for a new position at a different company." But if not, talking to your boss, without anger or accusation, ought to paint a pretty clear picture of what is or is not happening. "The only measure is your personal benefit, and you don't benefit from a confrontation."
Hardware: To the notion that chip vendors are unreliable, John West asserts, "this ain't news. Each of the chip manufacturers have missed schedules and shipped bad products in some years while others have had great years." The latest mishap, of course, is AMD's delayed Barcelona, due to a TLB bug, as well as the SPEC yanking all Opteron benchmark results and AMD's underestimating of the chip's power draw. "None of this is such a big deal for the desktop consumer." But West explains that when chip makers mess up the fundamentals, the future of big compute suffers. "This model is fundamentally broken. The real cost of these mistakes is born by the system vendors, and by the HPC community."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 18, 2007 05:14 AM
December 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
What happens when languages interfere?
App dev: Sometimes learning multiple languages leaves the speaker spitting out a word in one tongue when actually trying to talk in another. But, Martin Heller asks, does the same hold true for programming? When languages interfere. On balance, does already knowing one programming language help you to learn another, or do they get in the way of each other and cause you to make errors? Talkback below or via the link above.
Columnist's corner: First, a question. Does virtualization kick start your hunger for speedy storage systems? If it does, then Mario Apicella has one for you in this installment of Storage Insider. The notion that "virtualization is driving demand for bandwidth will hit like a ton of bricks for anyone who ever had to connect a VMware ESX server to a SAN," Apicella explains. Just think of how limited a 2Gbps FC pipe can be if you have to feed a bunch of virtual machines out of your FC array. "Makes you scream for faster storage, does it not?" PMC-Sierra has a promising solution in its Tachyon QE8 chip.
The news beat: Intel says it will offer solid-state storage for ultramobile PCs in the form of drives that weigh 0.6 grams and hold up to 4GB. JetBrains adds Ruby and Groovy support to its IDE via free, open source plug-ins. Gwava issues software for tracking BlackBerry text messages and phone calls to, ultimately, help customers makes sense of BlackBerry Enterprise Server logs. And Facebook sues a Canadian porn company, charging that it mined the social networking site for users' personal records.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 17, 2007 10:48 AM
December 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Sun announces support for OpenOffice, Apple patches QuickTime, Intel unveils solid-state storage drives for ultramobiles, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 17, 2007 08:27 AM
December 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Gulping enterprise technology Kool-Aid (and living to tell)
Columnist's corner: I've just to got love David Margulius' honesty even if I do find it hard to believe. "When I wrote my first InfoWorld article back in December 2001. I had absolutely no clue what I was talking about." Margulius reflects on his columns and confesses, "worse, I drank the Kool-Aid that technology was moving so fast it would soon solve all enterprise problems." The six years since have to done to him what they have to so many in this field: turned him hardened and calloused. So Margulius also looks forward. Getting entrepreneurial in 2008. "I now know that technology is just one piece of the puzzle, it's really about people, strategy and execution."
InfoWorld News Quiz: Think quick: which airline is not offering in-flight Net access? Got it. Okay, next: On what island did Googler Larry Page just get hitched? One more. What are the names Microsoft considered using for IE 7's successor? If you can answer those, then you're on your way to a strong score on this You don't tech news quiz. "There's no math this time, but familiarity with acronyms may come in handy. Ready? Let's rumble."
Notes from the field: The venerable, and consistent, Robert X. Cringely delivers to you the geek week in review. The apocalypse is coming, the apocalypse is coming! But how does he know? The proclamation w00t, which Merriam-Webster's declared its word of the year. As if that's not foreboding enough, there's also Googlepedia and The Greek Squad.
Platforms: You get what you reward. Those are Bob Lewis' words that one reader hands back in an explanation of why Netware withered that suggests IT managers opted, instead, for Windows because it required more admins to manage, patch, reboot, defrag and, thus, justified higher pay scales for the managers since they were in charge of a larger staff. Interesting theory, true or not. "Having lived through that period of IT history, I really don't think that's what happened," Lewis counters in The history of the world, part whatever -- why Windows beat Netware. Mr. Lewis offers four reasons to back up his conclusion that, "Novell bungled, pure and simple."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 17, 2007 04:44 AM
December 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Good tech stocks for a bad economy
Tech's bottom line: Picking stocks is difficult in the best of times. Making things even trickier, "it's been a Maalox, or maybe even a Xanax, couple of months," Bill Snyder writes. "Investors have been whipsawed by market tumbles sparked by the still out-of-control mortgage mess." And it's not going calm anytime soon. Good tech stocks for a bad economy. Yes, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Xerox are among those. Just as important are knowing which to avoid, the companies that "aren't necessarily bad investments. But they have a history of performing badly during an economic downturn. At other times, they may well be worth considering."
The news beat: Google develops a Wikipedia rival, currently in an invite-only beta, that unlike the original will feature bylined entries. Gateway says that CEO Ed Coleman will step down at January's end, thereby clearing the way for the head of Acer's Pan-American unit to take over. After online criminals used the security hole for attacks, Apple patches another QuickTime flaw, it's eighth fix this year. And AMD CEO Hector Ruiz said "we blew it," in 2007, and "we're very humbled and we learned from it."
Security: Roger Grimes can understand why Web sites like self-service password reset. "It's the incredible weakening of security that bothers me," he writes. The problem, of course, is the questions, which often consist of information known by lots of people, or even answers that can be found by searching the Internet. "If a Web site under your control has one of these password reset features that use self-service, make sure the questions are truly capable of being known by only one person," he espouses. In other words: Ask better password questions. "Assume that the person's closest loved one ends up being their worst enemy and is motivated to break into their account. If you want to be assured of the strength of your question, or at least give the user a fighting chance of staying secure, let them choose and input the security questions."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 14, 2007 10:41 AM
December 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
CIOs should budget conservatively for '08. Also, AMD details 'Swift' 3-in-1 chip, Microsoft issues Hyper-V beta, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 14, 2007 07:53 AM
December 14, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A service pack worth deploying
Best of the blogs: It's not for Vista, Exchange, or even XP. The service pack that headline refers to is the easily-missed Office 2007 SP1. "It looks like the Office team has got their act together when it comes to tuning their code paths," Randall Kennedy writes. No fan of that Vista SP1, Kennedy points out that in addition to typical bug fixes and compatibility tweaks, Office SP1 even brings a performance kick. It doesn't solve all the suite's problems, of course, namely code bloat. Related: Is Vista hampering Office 2007 adoption?
Green IT: They call it SPECpower_ssj2008. Yes, you read the right. It "doesn't so much roll off the tongue as ooze -- but what's in a name, anyway?" Ted Samson poses in this SustainableIT entry. Well, in this name is SPEC's (Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation), umm, spec for measuring servers' power performance. Such a benchmark, thus far, has proven elusive, he adds. "Plenty of smart people have been trying to devise one, and at first blush, it may seem like a deceptively simple task." Alas, it's not quite so cut and dry. Related: Climate Savers green catalog proves unripe.
Reader voices: I'm a mom who hasn't approved of my college age kids downloading music for free but I've also watched as they sampled dozens of songs just to hear them when they'd never have bought them or even known they existed before the Internet ... I've tried to take the moral high road here and now the RIAA tells me I'm a criminal just for putting my purchased Garth Brooks CD on my ipod?? Me? Us moms were purchased music's best advocate but this has gone too far. If the RIAA wants a war then I'm jumping in the trenches with my kids and refusing to buy any more CD's. An InfoWorld reader comments in response to Robert X. Cringely's I'm so bo-o-o-red with the RIAA (but what can I do?).
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 14, 2007 05:09 AM
December 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: Admit it. On a semi-regular basis, you find yourself late in the office, the only one who can get a certain task done and wondering if the relationship with your employer is worth it for you. The question at hand: Am I underpaid? Nick Corcodilos has a suggestion about figuring that out. "Put yourself on the block and see what kinds of bids you get. Seriously." But what of the recent surveys that suggest IT'ers are getting bigger raises than ever? Does it matter? Or, is that just more reason to be ticked off? "The next best way to get an idea of your value in the market is to talk to real, live people in your field. Get the information you seek straight from the horse's mouth."
First look: VMware Infrastructure 3 is a hard act to follow, Paul Venezia writes. And with that, he tears into VI3.5. "The big news for VI3.5 isn't the core functionality," Venezia writes in Preview: VMware Infrastructure builds on the base. "The larger story is in the management additions." One of the most prominent is Update Manager, an automated Windows and Linux patch manager designed specifically for virtual machines. The beta Venezia tested, however, had several problems, including fragile components and a Purple Screen of Death. Even still, he writes, "if the released code is significantly more stable than the beta, it will undoubtedly be a winner." Related: VMware, SAP inks support pact.
The news beat: Adobe is open sourcing some of its data access technologies, including remoting, messaging and the Action Message Format protocol. OpenOffice.org teamed with Ulteo to launch a beta program offering the OpenOffice 2.0 suite as a Web app, but only for the first 15,000 registrants. AMD will face tough questions at its analyst meeting, specifically regarding Barcelona shipping delays, goodwill charges related to its ATI acquisition, and speculation about the future of chairman and CEO Hector Ruiz. And BEA Systems is announcing today SmartConnect 3.0 which, it claims, connects ERP with ESB.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 13, 2007 10:30 AM
December 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Adobe gives data access code to open source, French court rules Amazon cannot deliver books free there, lobbying groups call on FTC chairman to recuse herself from DoubleClick review, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 13, 2007 07:23 AM
December 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: Personally, I've not shed a single tear over CompUSA's intent to close retail outlets, but Martin Heller has. "They usually had a better selection of equipment that I wanted to try than my local Best Buy or Circuit City, or my local mom-and-pop computer shops," is just the first reason, Heller explains, in Why I'll miss CompUSA. "Sic transit gloria mundi. Maybe my local store will continue under new ownership."
Hardware: "AMD has had the kind of bad luck that just happens in all sorts of endeavors, and is common to all players in the semiconductor industry," Tom Yager writes in Bad luck has AMD cowering. He's referring, of course, to commercial availability delays that will result from a flaw affecting a CPU unit known as the translation look-aside buffer, aka TLB. "End-users won't feel it, it won't cost AMD any OEM wins, and AMD will have a strong position in Q1 '08, where Intel has all eyes focused."
Careers: A distressed reader writes into Bob Lewis' Advice Line with an ostensibly simple question. "If staff who have one good year shouldn't be rewarded forever for it, why then should they be punished forever for having one bad year?" Lewis points out that such action is sometimes necessary. How long should a disciplinary freeze last? "Whether either of us agree with a particular disciplinary action, when an employee successfully corrects the issue and is back on course, the compensation freeze should end."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 13, 2007 04:47 AM
December 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)
SOA: Whittling myriad complex issues into a triptych, David Linthicum points out core problems currently haunting SOA vendors. For one, "many are so bound to their messaging, collateral, and sales pitches that they don't seem to find the time to listen to the customer before proposing a solution," he explains in Where the SOA technology vendors are falling down. Another is that, "most vendors are attempting to sell 'magical technology' that when bolted onto the existing infrastructure will indeed create an SOA." But, Linthicum asserts, many best practices need to be considered, and SOA is never just technology-driven. Related: BEA adds Eclipse to ESB, in SOA move.
The news beat: Sun Microsystems says it is discontinuing its developer tool suites and, instead, suggesting that users migrate to the NetBeans IDE, a new version of which, NetBeans 6.0, is being released today. As more and more developers are being paid by their employers to wok on open source projects, the question has arisen as to how they -- and, in turn, the open source community -- can protect their freedom and rights from employer demands and resist corporate influence. And the Commodore 64 celebrates its 25th anniversary, with nostalgic glimpses back in time by Steve Wozniak, former Commodore chairman Jack Tramiel, and IBM's Bill Lowe.
Notes from the field: Cringe sings, and snarls just a little, expressing a common feeling: I'm so bo-o-ored with the RIAA (but what can I do?). "We're all thieves here, right?" he asks, in reference to yet another file swapping case underway. At issue this time is whether ripping tunes from a CD to MP3s constitutes stolen goods. The RIAA, of course, says yes; some bloggers disagree, citing the RIAA's own language about unauthorized copies meaning only MP3s residing in your Kazaa shared folder. "It's really a moot argument. The fact is, if the recording industry could ban ripping MP3s outright -- or charge you money for it -- they'd do it in a heartbeat," Cringe explains.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 12, 2007 10:39 AM
December 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Sun drops dev tools in favor NetBeans; new version ships Wednesday. Also, SAP exploit on Wabisabilabi not getting bids yet, Nokia keeps pursuing near-field communications, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 12, 2007 08:36 AM
December 12, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Top 10 IT predictions for 2008
Forecasts: With this year almost over, the time is once again here to predict what the next will bring. XP's reprieve reigns on the throne of Top 10 IT predictions for 2008. So do the greening of tech, a major international hacking incident, and growing pains for social networking, to name just a few. "Turns out we did pretty well culling the wheat from the chaff last year and gazing ahead, though maybe we weren't bold enough in our declarations. So, this year we'll stretch a little," writes Nancy Weil of the IDG News Service.
Columnist's corner: What, prey tell, is zinc whisker infestation? A senior management that doesn't like to have its questionable practices challenged found that out, the hard way. Our Off the Record author's company needed new tiles for a raised datacenter floor and, after recommending a product and vendor they previously used, was told my one Mr. Pinchpenny that they should, instead, use some tiles wasting away in a company warehouse. You know, to save a few bucks. "Several months later, a couple of our servers suddenly stopped in their tracks ... A few months later, the same thing happened again." So they called in a specialist. That's where the aforementioned zinc whisker infestation comes in. The tiles, you see, had galvanized steel edging which made direct contact with the anodized aluminum frame that holds up the computer floor, thus causing the outages. "To my knowledge, none of us actually saw any of the whiskers, yet a quick Web search reveals that they've been a known issue -- since 1948."
Apps: The latest in a long line of recent BI moves comes this week in the form of SAP's deal with Visual Numerics (VNI), under which SAP will embed VNI's libraries of algorithms for predictive analytics and forecasting into a NetWeaver component. "So, not only are the big guys buying up the smaller BI guys, they are also enhancing their BI with BA (business analytics), aka forecasting -- once the domain of two major players, SAS and SPSS," Ephraim Schwartz explains in Plotting the future of business intelligence. These events, Schwartz continues, tell us that it "may have taken five or 10 years for the enterprise to understand the significance of BI, but once BI was adopted, the learning curve proved short, and now that enterprises have seen the light, they want more. The enterprise does not only want the ability to look back; it wants the ability to look forward."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 12, 2007 08:09 AM
December 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The inherent bias in most surveys
Best of the blogs: Tis the season to publish surveys, Ephraim Schwartz proclaims. Proving his point, Schwartz's inbox was stuffed with at least four this very morning, ranging from the rate of IT projects that fail to deliver on expectations to one about security and storage spending. Are most surveys inherently biased? Could be. "Of course, I'm still waiting for the survey from a survey company that surveys how surveys boosted sales of companies that do surveys."
Hardware: Famed French designer Philippe Starck says that Amazon's Kindle is "a little sad" because the designer "wasn't quite humble enough to completely disappear." And James Niccolai of the IDG News Service asserts that Amazon "got off lightly from the critique." Related preview: Hands-on with Kindle.
The news beat: SAP and VMware ink a pact under which SAP will support its applications running on VMware's ESX Server through the entire lifecycle, while vulnerability auction site Wabisabilabi puts a remote exploit for SAP up for sale. Microsoft says it is forging ties between Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server by way of a patch to be delivered in accordance with the next CTP of SQL Server 2008. And CEO Mark Hurd says that cost-cutting is crucial to Hewlett-Packard's growth.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 11, 2007 10:33 AM
December 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
New DNS attacks could be glimpse into phishing 2.0, Toshiba to make solid-state drives, Mobile Linux specification released, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 11, 2007 09:09 AM
December 11, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A crowdsourcing invitation to InfoWorld readers
Editor's blog: On the trend of crowdsourcing, Editor-in-chief Eric Knorr adds explains that, "Mob wisdom goes further than closing the gap between producer and consumer. It turns the consumer into a stakeholder in the endeavor, be it a new product, a wiki book, a feature article, or -- who knows? -- the solution to global warming," Editor-in-chief Eric Knorr explains. "The more you participate, the more you get back. In case you haven't guessed, that's an invitation to InfoWorld readers, too."
From the feature well: That said, tapping into collaborators for product development is not exactly a new idea. "What is revolutionary about this Web-era twist on traditional BI tools such as focus groups and customer surveys is the breadth and depth of intelligence that can be gathered, the ease with which such projects can be undertaken, and the scale of returns that can be achieved with little upfront investment," Lena West writes in Mob wisdom means business. Still, it's not for the faint of heart, West writes, adding that even for those willing, it's still an uphill battle. "But if you think crowdsourcing is alive only among the hip, latte-drinking, highly funded Web 2.0 startup crowd, think again." Dell, Eli Lilly, Proctor & Gamble, Google, and Best Buy are among the practitioners. "For many organizations, there is just too much untapped knowledge within the company walls to forgo giving crowdsourcing at least an in-house chance."
Careers: Shifting gears here, Bob Lewis responds to a reader who disagrees with him about achieving exceptional performance by repeating the results of others, rather than having them repeat yours. "My point was simple: If you want to encourage the broader use of anyone's success, you have to make it clear that making use of someone else's ideas is the engine that makes this happen much more than creating re-usable something-or-others," Lewis explains in Why re-using is harder than building for re-use. "When you re-use the work of others, you're forced to accept a different view of the world than your own. That can be a whole lot harder than turning the view you have into software and swim-lane diagrams."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 11, 2007 04:57 AM
December 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Notes from the field: The expert and watchful eyes of Robert X. Cringely were on Google founders Larry Page's wedding on a private island owned by Richard Branson. "The more interesting marriage, to my mind, is the one between Page and Branson -- and I don't mean that in a pass-the-baby-oil kind of way," Cringe writes in Google's Virgin marriage. "Neither man has met an industry he didn't want to disrupt -- music, airlines, wireless communications, space travel, advertising, media ... Imagine a world where the two great forces merged. Branson builds it, Google slaps ads on it, we buy it. A new cartel for the new century. Or something like that."
App dev: While Paris on Rails conference organizers apparently missed the news, a new version, Ruby on Rails 2.0 was released Friday. In response to that, Martin Heller looks at Installing Rails 2.0 on Windows XP. "Nothing is ever easy," he concludes.
The news beat: Intel laces vPro with encryption to add a new layer of hard drive protection and ease the use of commercial encryption tools. Following in Google's footsteps, NetSuite kicks off an auction-style IPO, hoping to bring in between $13 to $16 per share. Iona upgrades SOA technologies, both proprietary and open source, including Artix and Fuse product lines. And LinkedIn opens its site to developers amid a home page redesign.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 10, 2007 10:43 AM
December 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Borland aims to bring BI to the application lifecycle, Dell Web site reveals that tablet PC is ready to ship, ex-Microsoft employee charged with fraud, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 10, 2007 08:32 AM
December 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Amazed at innovation of the bad guys
Security: Spending a week in Silicon Valley visiting with companies there has Matt Hines explaining that "things are currently thriving in the SV region -- and the security segment certainly seems to be no exception." While that is a good sign for the industry, Hines also found that, "threats continue to get scarier and stealthier. We've been writing about this trend for years, but after you spend a few days briefing with the experts about issues like botnets and polymorphic, targeted malware attacks, you can't help but feel a little more paranoid and amazed at the innovation of the bad guys." IT security fear and grow-thing in Silicon Valley. "The biggest takeaway from the entire week is that the security sector is amazingly vibrant, fast-moving and full of some of the most unabashedly brilliant individuals you could ever care to interview."
From the InfoWorld Test Center: Calling it "boring as hell," Randall Kennedy explains that, "Microsoft Office Live Workspaces has to be one of the most anti-climactic releases of the past decade." Why? Well, "not only does OLW do nothing really new, it doesn't even do what it does as well as other, competing solutions." Take Live Documents, for instance. This freebie from InstaColl makes OLW appear decidedly pedestrian, Kennedy adds. "Perhaps I’ve been spoiled. There are so many great Web services solutions out there -- most of them free like OLW -- that my expectations keep getting nudged higher and higher." Read the full review.
The news beat: Borland says it will blend business intelligence and application lifecycle management with new products that focus on business management and collect data gathered by tools from open source projects and different vendors. RIM, Yahoo and JetBlue band together to offer in-flight Wi-Fi and instant messaging such that customers will be able to use laptops and Wi-Fi phones to access customized e-mail and IM. And CompUSA said it will start winding down its retail operations as the investment firm that acquired it is looking to sell its assets.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 10, 2007 04:43 AM
December 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Facebook isn't budging on Beacon's broad user tracking, Acer will take over from Lenovo as sponsor of the Olympic Games, Dell closes its hardware design unit in India, Western Digital disallows multimedia file sharing on its 1TB NAS drive, and more. LISTEN!
Posted by Caroline Craig on December 7, 2007 07:43 AM
December 07, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Best of the blogs: Zack Urlocker spent 15 minutes with Kindle, Amazon's new portable e-book reader. The display, he writes, is fantastic. "To me, it's as easy to read as a book." Hands-on: Amazon Kindle. What's more, it's "not nearly so ugly in person as it appears in photos." That said, though, "if you've already got a cell phone, a Blackberry, an iPod and a laptop, then adding one more device seems like overkill," Urlocker writes. "But if the Kindle could be a general purpose browser and email device, that would be a different story."
Tech's bottom line: Surveys by three firms demonstrate that the credit crunch and potential for a recession have IT execs on the alert about spending next year, with the software sector taking the biggest hit. One of those firms, JMP, has been conducting the survey for seven years, and according to analyst Patrick Walravens, the result is the worst since 2001. "The potential rate cut is dominating the thinking of investors right now," Bill Snyder explains in Analysts predict IT squeeze. "The market is counting on a cut of at least one-quarter of a point and that news is essentially priced into stocks at this point. A half-point cut would obviously be welcomed with a rally, while a stand-pat stance would makes things ugly in a big hurry."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 7, 2007 04:54 AM
December 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A stocking full of tech trends
Columnist's corner: As this year starts winding down, the time is upon us to look at what matters most in tech, particularly the megatrends holding potential to affect your job or career. Morgan Stanley does just that in an annual report. "It's provocative, but we'll take it with a grain of salt," David Margulius writes in this week's Enterprise Insight. U.S. IT spending as a percentage of corporate capital expenditures is back up to 50 percent and climbing, Margulius reports, though most of the action is taking place outside The States. "There are new growth opportunities everywhere you turn."
Sustainable IT: We're seeing more and more companies hop on the green IT bus, the latest being Cisco, with its CUD, as in Connected Urban Development. CUD, part of the William J. Clinton Foundation's Global Initiative, is designed to apply technology to challenges facing cities in regards to climate change. "Cisco is clearly serious about the projects, because it's committed $15 million to CUD and enlisted the brainpower of engineers from MIT," Ted Samson reports in Cisco seeds green innovations aimed at climate change. But Cisco isn't investing in CUD entirely for altruistic reasons. "These projects give the company an opportunity to showcase its technology and, the company explains, "build a much better relationship with cities and local government, and to open new markets." For which, Samson adds, "I certainly don't begrudge Cisco."
The news beat: IBM researchers build a supercomputer on a chip with technology called silicon nanophotonics that replaces some of the wires on a chip with pulses of light for more efficient data transfers between cores. Cisco warns Windows users of a bug in its Cisco Security Agent desktop software that could let hackers create a buffer overflow and crash a PC. Oracle buys Moniforce, a Dutch maker of Web application performance management software, and says it will add the acquired technology to its own Enterprise Manager tool. And open source project-hosting site SourceForge opens an eBay-like marketplace so users can offer support services for sale.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 6, 2007 10:28 AM
December 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft posts preview of Volta Web app tool for tier-splitting, Facebook lets users opt of Beacon, AMD delays quad-core Opteron due to bug, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 6, 2007 08:17 AM
December 06, 2007 | Comments: (0)
U.S. gov't data rights and wrongs
Notes from the field: The Feds are all over our personal information, "but when it comes to data generated by and for the White House, privacy and secrecy are the watchwords." Data rights and wrongs. Think White House attorney Scott Bloch, who called in Geeks on Call when a virus was destroying the files on his PC but, it appears, before letting them loose copied personal files to a thumb drive and now refuses to turn those over to investigators. "What's ironic is that Bloch's investigation ties directly into a bunch of other data discrepancies – including how the White House 'misplaced' 5 million emails when it upgraded from Notes to Outlook, and the use of non-official email addresses to either a) avoid Federal record keeping laws, or b) avoid violating the Hatch Act, depending on whose story you believe." Oh yes, and the plot keeps getting thicker.
App dev: Microsoft's Volta, just posted as a technology preview, is a new methodology for creating Web applications. "Instead of deciding on your architecture at the beginning, building the tiers and tying them together, you start by building a .NET client application, then designate components to run on the server and client tiers later in the cycle, and let the tool generate the plumbing for you," Martin Heller explains in Volta: Web development by tier-splitting. "The tag line is 'Web development using only the materials in the room.' Why do I keep looking around for Heidi Klum?" Related news: Microsoft offers Volta preview for Web apps development.
Careers: Don't interview. That's Nick Corcodilos' advice for employment-seekers. "Job interviewing is so over-defined an activity that it's a joke," he writes. "Don't interview. Talk about your work. Heck, do the job in your meeting. Anything but a dopey job interview." Instead, he recommends, come up with a new model. "You've gotta be free to tell stories about the work you do without notes, and you've gotta focus on your audience -- not on your resume. Don't interview. Entertain from the heart."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 6, 2007 04:38 AM
December 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Careers: One reader confesses to being sucked into the doom and gloom of his co-workers, until his wife sat him down for a talk to point out the good things about his job. Lewis agrees that it's best to view the glass as half-full, and adds that, "the difference between 'This place stinks and we need to fix it,' and 'We can make this place even better,' is immense. Most of the time it's a matter of attitude," he writes in this Advice Line post. What's more, "if you don't see what's right, you're likely to break it in the effort of fixing what's wrong."
Columnist's corner: While Microsoft prepares Dynamics CRM 4.0, due this month, "a substantial portion of efforts around this release are focused on gaining ground on Salesforce.com," Sean Gallagher writes in Titan or Titanic? "Most likely, if Microsoft is lucky, Titan will help it hold its ground against Salesforce. But it won't even begin to address competitive issues with the larger enterprise CRM players like Oracle and SAP." Related: Salesforce.com launches data sharing and SAP puts a Web 2.0 spin on CRM.
Hardware: Forced to explore the entertainment value of learning, Tom Yager and family learned enough about real ticks and spiders to anger him. "Intel's Year of the Tick will coincide with AMD's Year of the Spider, and I couldn't look at this juxtaposition of marketing phraseology and not think of its parallels in nature," he writes in The tale of the spider and the tick. "A Spider by any other name is still an awe-inspiring creature, and no matter what you call it, you have something that is as merciless as it is beautiful. Am I stretching the metaphor too far to point out that unlike elsewhere in nature, there is never a race or a battle between spider and prey, and that the spider's limitless patience always pays off?"
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 5, 2007 11:07 AM
December 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Salesforce.com launches data-sharing service, Verizon hedges on Android, Motorola CTO leaves for Cisco, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 5, 2007 08:55 AM
December 05, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The Linux server we couldn't break
From the InfoWorld Test Center: Stratus has introduced the ftServer 4400 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux Advanced Server and, in so doing, created "a completely redundant server," Paul Venezia writes. "Yes, I do mean completely redundant." Stratus, with the ftServer line, effectively bundles two discrete servers into a single entity -- but Venezia maintains that doesn't mean the ftServer is a cluster. It's not perfect, though. The CPUs are slower than Venezia would like, it would be nice to have the option of an Intel quad-core chip, and the price is higher than a clustered solution. The upside? "I couldn't break the ftServer 4400. It just runs. If the goal is a completely fault-tolerant single-server solution, look no further." Read the full review.
The news beat: Salesforce.com unveils Salesforce to Salesforce, which it claims enables any company using its platform to integrate and share data. Red Hat announces MRG software for messaging, real-time and grid, and aims it at IBM and Tibco. Verizon hedges on using Google's Android platform for mobile development. And Microsoft says that a Windows flaw could steer IE to hackers and could potentially expose some customers to online attacks.
Careers: In response to a previous Advice Line entry, one reader writes in commenting that he mostly agrees with Bob Lewis, but that "good leaders need to give some folks a dope slap every now and then to wake them up." The heart of this issue is blame, how best praise those who identify and fix mistakes, and how to handle those who made them in the first place. "The trick, I think, is to separate the process of handling incidents from the process of managing employee performance," Lewis asserts in Ignore mistakes? "Holding someone accountable for an honest mistake is rarely ... probably never ... a good idea."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 5, 2007 05:35 AM
December 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Windows flaw steers IE to malicious Web sites, Facebook admits Beacon is more intrusive than previously let on, Sun announces a release date for Ops Center, EBay and Yahoo Japan link auction sites, and more.
LISTEN!
Posted by Caroline Craig on December 4, 2007 08:16 AM
December 04, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Giving users control of identity
Special report: Despite federation's alluring promise, legal and governance issues have been holding it back. "In many places, such as your company Web site, federation just isn't possible using traditional methods," Philip Windley explains. That's where the notion of 'user-centric identity comes into play. "The key to this burgeoning revolution in identity is the fact that the technology places employees, clients, partners, and customers in the driver's seat when it comes to relaying their identity." Federating identity for the Web. As with many technologies, user-centric federation faces something of a battle to win widespread adoption in the enterprise. On the standards front, it comes down to CardSpace and OpenID. And it's not too early to start exploring, Windley urges. "You can use both OpenID and CardSpace now on a variety of sites on the Web. If you really want to get your hands dirty, good libraries and toolkits are available for CardSpace and OpenID." Related podcasts: An identity layer for the Web, and User-centric identity in the enterprise.
Sustainable IT: Emerson Network Power issued as a free download a how-to guide it calls "Energy Logic: Reducing Data Center Energy Consumption by Creating Savings that Cascade Across Systems." Ted Samson calls it "an impressive piece of work" that outlines ten interrelated technology strategies that comprise a holistic approach to improving datacenter efficiency. The report starts at the server component level, moves on to power supplies, then power-management software, server virtualization, and so on. Emerson delivers free blueprint for building power-efficient datacenter.
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 4, 2007 04:55 AM
December 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)
When Microsoft attacks! FUD at its worst
Best of the blogs: "When the source of the criticism is Microsoft, and when the accusations being leveled are both baseless and deliberately misleading, I do take offense," Randall Kennedy admits. He's referring to Team Redmond's rebuttal of the series of controversial entries about Vista's performance and "how it sucks compared to Windows XP" and SP3 specifically. When Microsoft Attacks! Microsoft Windows Vista team member Nick White criticized Kennedy's OfficeBench linear test script. "What really steams my clams is the fact that Microsoft tried to dismiss OfficeBench without so much as a shred of technical data to support their claims. That's FUD mongering at its worst."
The news beat: Britain's intelligence agency, MI5, reports that Shell and Rolls Royce were hacked by Chinese spies plying the networks for information. Intel says that its forthcoming Diamondville chip will be based on Silverthorne, a 45 nanometer microarchitecture-based processor. Attackers target an upatched Apple QuickTime flaw that could enable them to run code on a victim's PC. And open source content management vendor Alfresco aligns with Adobe and also bashes SharePoint, calling it "slow and not scalable" and "hard to program and extend."
Notes from the field: Robert X. Cringely asks the timely question Has Facebook jumped the shark? "I'm not the only old coot who's had his fill of Facebook," Cringe writes, referring of course to the Beacon service that, it turns out, is collecting shopping information even when users are logged out. "Either they're evil, and can't be trusted. Or they're inept, and can't be trusted."
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 3, 2007 10:13 AM
December 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Business Objects teams with SPSS to bolster analytics on the desktop, Motorola CEO Ed Zander to step down, Facebook modifies controversial service, and more LISTEN!
Posted by Tom Sullivan on December 3, 2007 08:40 AM
December 03, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Begin RBAC, strengthen security
Security: "Good computer security is driven by role-based, least-privilege access control," Roger Grimes begins GO RBAC now. That's RBAC as in role-based access control, a practice introduced in 1992 but still in its infancy on most platforms. "If you don't have a role-based security model, you should start researching it and strive to move to RBAC, if only a tiny step at a time. You can start by defining your access control security groups by roles instead of departments. Don't designate HR, IT, and accounting security groups; instead, create security groups for each department based on their roles. Look to your company's organizational chart or job descriptions if you need a beginning point."
Gripe Line: A reader who is more in tune with Internet fraud than HSBC alerted the bank after selling an item on Craigslist for $75 and receiving a $2,150 payment. "I knew I was dealing with a fake check. That's not unusual, or even disturbing. It's expected. What was not expected was the response I received when trying to report this fraud." Cash fraudulent check, HSBC says. Check overpayment scams typically result in the seller ultimately being liable for the full amount. Even still, HSBC told him to deposit the check and see if it cleared -- thereby recommending he commit a felony. "'Well sir,' they said 'we can't tell you if it's fake or not u