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The InformationWeek March 2005 Archive « February 2005 | Main | April 2005 » |
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IM Systems Under Attack
Hackers are applying the same social-engineering principles used in E-mail phishing attacks to instant messages. Yahoo Messenger last week was hit by a phishing attack in which IMs were sent under the name of someone from the victim's buddy list; the victim was directed to click on a link to a Yahoo-looking site where their login information was recorded.
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Bloggers Blaze Firefox Trail
Endless amounts of web real estate have been dedicated to Firefox's inroads into the Microsoft Internet Explorer installed base, whether its progress is sustainable given ongoing security concerns and whether enterprises are following the lead of some of the tech elite in moving to Firefox.
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HP's Quiet Man: A Good Choice
What is the business world coming to? Bucking the trend toward big-mouthed, flashy, and combative corporate leaders, Hewlett-Packard's board picked a boring workhorse to run the struggling company following the ouster of "celebrity" CEO Carly Fiorina. Good for the board. And good for HP.
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Google Adds Stock Charts
Google yesterday added stock charts to its search results. Entering MSFT, Microsoft's ticker symbol, into the Google search box now returns a graph of the company's stock performance for the day, along with other financial details.
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Conflicted Over File Sharing
As a one-time freelance writer, I pocketed a few extra bucks from the intellectual property I created. The law recognizes that my writings had some financial value, and provided protection against their unauthorized use.
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Open Source Vs. Microsoft: In Brazil, It?s No Contest
In about a month’s time, the Brazilian government will initiate a program called PC Conectado, or Connected PC, with the goal of aiding millions of its low-income citizens in purchasing computers. Don’t expect Microsoft to be on the desktop.
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Starship Enterprise Needs To Outsource IT
A business trend has really taken hold when references to it resonate not only in the corporate world but also in popular culture. We've seen that previously with the notions of Megatrends, Tipping Points, the Peter Principle, and the like. Now, it seems, outsourcing is the latest business concept to work its way into mainstream thought.
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RFID: The Terrorist?s New Friend?
A plan by the State Department to put radio-frequency identification chips in new passports could pose a threat to the safety of Americans traveling abroad. That’s the contention of activist Bill Scannel on his Web site RFIDKills.com. The chip would contain the same information found in passports: name, date of birth, passport number, and photograph.
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Certification: Hot Ticket Or Expensive Coffee Coaster?
Certifications sure look nice when properly framed and hung in your office. They can also provide a lot of heft to a resume, something that a potential employer can easily pick up during a quick scan of your professional history. But how much is a certification worth when it's essentially sold to you by a vendor like Cisco, Microsoft, or Novell? It's an ongoing controversy in the tech world that's grown a bit more complicated by the emergence of Linux certifications. Some criticize the concept of open-source software certification as being oxymoronic. Others note that they're just trying to find the best talent they can in a market they're just beginning to understand.
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What's On Bill Gates' Mind
Bill Gates is thinking hard about video on the Internet. So reports the Wall Street Journal today. During his twice-yearly Think Week last week, the paper reports that the growth of Internet video was among the topics of the 300 papers he plans to read, and he spent a 30-minute walk on the beach—the first time he left the cottage last week—pondering the topic.
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Identity Theft: Microsoft To The Rescue?
What technology takes away, it can also give back, so to speak. Take your identity, for instance. Tools to help protect your identity may be embedded in the next generation of the Windows PC operating system and Microsoft Internet Explorer browser.
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My Son Is Driving!?
My son received his first solicitation to buy a car this week. This must be an exciting and frightening time in every parent's life--your child behind the wheel of his or her first car. My, how time has flown!
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Violating Privacy The Legal Way
You don't have to be gumshoe Lennie Briscoe to figure out that a market has emerged for the criminal trafficking of personal data. The headlines over the past few weeks have been rife with examples of data compromised at the hands of hackers. Well-publicized attacks on LexisNexis, California State University Chico, and, of course, ChoicePoint may just lead the private sector to reform security controls placed on the data with which it's entrusted. But what happens when your privacy is violated without the law being broken? What happens when there's no clear policy defining how data stewards can use, or sell, personal information?
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Do businesses want IT staffs to light a spark -- or just keep the lights on?
Two studies this week raise doubts about companies' faith in IT departments to deliver innovation and business value.
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The Expanding RSS Universe
The RSS universe is relatively small; a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project survey estimates that about 5% of Web content is delivered via RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. But a just-released survey of subscribers of the ultra-techie blog and news site Slashdot shows users want more from their RSS feeds.
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No Big Winners In Search-Engine Wars
You don’t need to be the top dog to be a winner. Barry Diller understands that as his media company IAC/InterActiveCorp seeks to acquire search engine Ask Jeeves for $1.85 billion.
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Baseball Hackers Strike Out
I was speaking with Bill Schlough, VP and CIO of the San Francisco Giants, last week for an article about a security survey commissioned by MailFrontier. I asked him whether the Giants had ever been targeted by hackers.
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IM 'Advances'
Many of you will undoubtedly welcome the newly released ICQ 5 instant-messaging service from America Online that was announced Monday. It features voice and video messaging that can let you stay even more in touch with co-workers, friends, family, and anyone else with whom you choose to engage in online conversation and who might have your IM name.
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High-Court Plea: Don't Stifle Innovation
The law has a tough time keeping pace with technology, and that could prove problematic for many Internet innovators and users if the Supreme Court sides with the movie studios and recording companies in a case it will hear later this month.
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CIO Job Can Be A Road To The Top
The list of CIOs who move into top executive jobs keeps growing. Alan Biland, longtime CIO of Snap-on Inc., this week moves into the job of president of Snap-on Tools Co. LLC.
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Google Code
Google today launched Google Code, a site for programmers interested in Google-related development. The company is using the site to publish free source code and API information. Search, of course, is more of a platform these days than an application and this gift of code will only strengthen Google’s developer community.
Giving Aid To The Enemy
Cybercrooks don’t need any extra help, but they’re getting it from their victims. Look what happened at the Internal Revenue Service.
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Job Security: How Safe Do You Feel?
The job market is growing, but that fact doesn’t calm the nerves of many IT pros looking for work.
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Serial Entrepreneur Strikes Again With Open Source
"Is there a place for open-source software at my company?" It's one of the most important questions that IT executives have been asking themselves over the past few years. The answer depends, among other things, on your company's level of comfort with open source and your ability to integrate open-source applications with existing proprietary apps.
The above question has also helped open source drift into the crosshairs of the IT consulting market. But unlike the technologies that created the last consulting boom, fed by the late-1990s frenzy over the Internet and E-business, open source is likely to keep overzealous speculators at bay and give the advantage to the user.
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The Next Ascential Thing In Software
IBM's announcement today of its planned $1 billion acquisition of Ascential Software seemed to hit on all the key tech industry buzzwords: integration, business intelligence, on-demand business. In a nutshell, Ascential supplies the plumbing that lets big companies in industries like retail pull together data from a variety of systems and create enough commonality to make betterinformed business decisions.
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Law, Order, And Technology In 2005
By the time May flowers begin to bloom in San Francisco, the city's Bay Area Rapid Transit District (BART) police department can expect an upgrade to the wireless handheld technology that helps its 191 officers patrol the region's 43 rail stations and 104 miles of tracks. Central to the upgrade is a geographic mapping application that integrates with the BART dispatch system to deliver via wireless handhelds key logistical information to officers, including train-station schematics, track milepost markers, and underground emergency-exit locations. The trend in law enforcement in recent years is to make information technology as much a standard-issue piece of equipment as a flashlight or a pistol.
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Blogger Rights: Multiple Views
No consensus exists, at least among readers responding to an online InformationWeek poll, on whether bloggers should be given the same legal protections as journalists when protecting confidential sources.
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Little Pay Difference Between H-1B, American IT Workers
Great sympathy exists for qualified IT workers who can’t find jobs, especially at a time when the government will let in 20,000 extra foreign workers this year, many of them IT professionals. The government will shortly post new rules to allow employers to hire the additional alien workers under its H-1B visa program.
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3-D Expected To Have More Success With Security Than With Sharks
3-D isn't much more than a gimmick when it comes to movies. I didn't find Jaws 3 (in 3-D!) any scarier than the first two films simply because my eyes could perceive a subtle depth between the killer shark and its victims. But in the world of biometric security, 3-D is poised to become a significant breakthrough in the quest to keep the bad guys off of airplanes and away from the nation's critical infrastructure. The question is, when?
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Tech Development Based On Red, White, And Blue, Not Just Green
Over the past 58 years of its existence, the Central Intelligence Agency's information-gathering needs have played a role in the development of some significant technology, including the U-2 and SR71 spy aircraft, Corona surveillance satellites, and even the Internet. Despite what promises to be some ego-bruising restructuring within the U.S. intelligence community to accommodate the new National Intelligence Authority, the agency has its sights set on a number of emerging technologies it hopes will take its intelligence gathering and analysis to new levels. Based upon the CIA's solid technology track record, the business world should take note.
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The Apple Bloggers 3: Heirs To Revolutionary Pamphleteers
AppleInsider, PowerPage, and ThinkSecret are the 21st century descendents of Common Sense, Thomas Paine’s 1776 pamphlet defending colonial independence from England.
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Customer?s Gripe Blamed On Symantec's Success
Ever had a problem with a product, couldn’t get help from the vendor, and wished you could let the company’s CEO know of your frustration? Chuck Smith got his chance as he came face-to-face with Symantec CEO John Thompson.
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Career Detour: Government
Hey job seekers: Being an IT professional in the federal government needn’t be a life sentence.
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National Security Agency Opens Up
Right about now, the National Security Agency is feeling pretty good about its decision to use open source as the medium through which the agency is evangelizing improved security technology. NSA's SELinux technology is gaining traction and the agency, like many other areas of the government, is realizing that it needs to team with industry to meet tomorrow's technology challenges.
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Tilting at windmills, or slaying the giant at IDF?
If there is ever an argument that Intel is king of the semiconductor world, its annual Developer Forum, held this week in San Francisco, provides clear evidence of the company’s dominance. About 5,000 hardware and software developers and 500 press members from around the world hang on each keynote speech and new product announcement like pronouncements from on high. It’s not that Intel never has problems--its Itanium and cell-phone processor efforts have been fraught with difficultly and frustration for a company that is often loath to admit any setbacks. Intel simply paves over its mistakes with cash.
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Symantec & Veritas
Four of us from InformationWeek met with Symantec CEO John Thompson and Veritas CEO Gary Bloom this morning. What surprised me was how bullish both were about Linux.
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To succeed in IT, you might need to give up your 'IT person' identity
When it comes to managing your IT career, the fact that IT salaries rose last year after a three-year slump might not be the most important fact in this week's report by Foote Partners LLC. The more important finding might be the increasing number of "hybrid jobs" that combine IT and operations responsibilities.
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Raises, Anyone?
It's not often enough that we can be the bearer of good IT career and salary news, given such developments have been few and far between for most of this decade. Salaries for IT pros with certified and noncertified skills went up last year, following declines in the previous three years.
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Consumer Company Seeks Supply Chain Executives With RFID Experience
Calling on all experts in radio frequency identification technology: Your time has come to jump into the consumer goods or retail sector and become a vice president of supply chain.
If you’re a RF engineer at a semiconductor manufacturer who is looking to change careers, you might want to checkout some Websites at consumer goods companies, for example. There’s at least one focused on health and hygiene seeking a few experts in RFID technology for packaging designs, and supply chain management. This consumer goods company, with $15.1 billion in annual revenue, operates in 37 countries and employees more than 62,000 people worldwide. Have you guessed its name?
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Trust: You Should Bank On It
Ruth David thinks a lot about information sharing; she just doesn’t like to use the term.
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Trust: You Should Bank On It
Ruth David thinks a lot about information sharing; she just doesn’t like to use the term.
Continue reading "Trust: You Should Bank On It..."
Trust: You Should Bank On It
Ruth David thinks a lot about information sharing; she just doesn’t like to use the term.
Continue reading "Trust: You Should Bank On It..."
The Future of P2P
StreamCast Networks, Inc., makers of the Morpheus peer-to-peer search and sharing software, and Grokster, Inc., makers of the Grokster file-sharing software, today filed briefs in the closely watched U.S. Supreme Court case that's expected to decide the future of peer-to-peer file sharing.
This battle between the content industry and the technology industry will determine whether companies can continue to offer tools that displease copyright holders.
"For the past century, copyright litigation in this country has been an endlessly repeating cycle. Time and again, the corporations that control both artistic content and the current method of distributing that content ask the courts to protect them against new and better technologies, by banning those technologies," Michael Page, of Keker & Van Nest, counsel for Grokster, Inc. said in a statement. "Time and again, the courts have refused to extend the copyright monopoly, and have allowed new technologies to develop and mature, to the benefit of artists, the public and the very corporations that sought to ban them. That basic principle--that copyrights, no matter how numerous, do not give the holders a veto over technological progressis at the heart of the Supreme Court's 1984 Sony opinion. The Grokster/StreamCast case is just the latest assault on this principle, and we are asking that the Court reject that assault and reaffirm Sony."
The case will be argued before the court on March 29.
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