IT Confidential: Time To Ferret Out Your Secret Sharers
The announcement last week by Attorney General John Ashcroft that he had executed search warrants on five homes and one ISP in connection with alleged illegal copying and sharing of music and movie files didn't necessarily send shivers up the spines of business-technology managers, but maybe it should have. What may have been looked on once as a benign distraction is now a major federal crime. And big business isn't immune, says John Soat.
Big Business Is Not Immune
The announcement yesterday by Attorney General John Ashcroft that the Justice Department had executed search warrants on five homes and one ISP in connection with alleged illegal copying and sharing of music and movie files didn't necessarily send shivers up the spines of business-technology managers-but maybe it should have.
Javalobby Gets Sunburned
For several months now, Sun Microsystems has released a steady stream of software into the open source community. And while it's unlikely that the company will serve up Java for the same treatment (with good reason, in my opinion), it seemed as if Sun was learning how to deal effectively with the open source community.
That's what makes the company's dust-up with Javalobby last week so mystifying.
Business Technology: Attention, Fiefdom Fighters
Bob Herbold, who was Microsoft's chief operating officer during the company's megagrowth in the late '90s, has written a new book called The Fiefdom Syndrome, and it offers extremely valuable advice from someone who earlier in his career served as CIO and then senior VP of advertising at Procter & Gamble.
Compliance Today, Intelligence Tomorrow
E-mail will make its way into the realm of BI as data warehouses become more sophisticated and companies push themselves to eke out every competitive edge.
SmartAdvice: Build Facts And Allies To Get Head Start On Budgeting
Start now to identify budget strategies and then stick to the party line, The Advisory Council says. Look at your company's long-term commitment to particular software vendors and business strategies when considering open-source software; and think through access to your resources and who's responsible for security before outsourcing.
What Will Be The Next Big Thing?
It's time for industry mavericks to inject new thought, energy, passion, and creativity back into business technology, Michael Friedenberg says.
Make Linux, Not War
Leave it to Microsoft to bring together three countries that spent a good part of the twentieth century slaughtering one another's citizens.
That's the story in Asia, where the governments of China, South Korea and Japan recently agreed to develop a Linux-based operating system. The idea is to give government and business users in the three countries a practical, low-cost alternative to Windows, tailored to m
Holding The Course
Even if BI spending is softening a bit for some companies, anecdotal information from our readers indicates that the overall market is firm.
What To Know About E-Mail Archiving
E-mail retention needs often conflict -- even among departments in the same company. A records management expert suggests seven steps to effective archiving.
SmartAdvice: Windows Versus Java Desktop System
Consider support costs along with functionality when deciding whether to move to Java Desktop System, The Advisory Council says. Also, examine your priorities when divvying up work and personal time.
Work/Life: When Things Go Wrong
Editor-at-large John Foley catches up with two IT pros who got fired after taking action. Work/Life is a column on some of the interesting people we meet.
Victory, Of Sorts
Business Objects claims it achieved victory over MicroStrategy in a recent trade secrets trial. That depends on how you define "victory."
Intellectual Property Law Threatens Innovation
We've recently seen a rush of support for open source by major proprietary vendors. IBM said it will open-source its Cloudscape database.
Sun Microsystems previewed its Project Janus technology to allow Solaris to run Linux applications natively and allow customers to run Solaris and Linux applications side by side.
The Privacy Lawyer: To Videotape Or Not To Videotape
Employers may have good reason for monitoring employees through videotaping or other means, but they'd also better have smart policies in place when they take these steps or risk legal exposure, Parry Aftab says.
Real-Time BI
Real-time demands require real-time solutions, as they say. Increasingly, that's the creed of business intelligence.
Linux Is More Secure Than Windows. It Just Is.
Evans Data recently provided more proof that Linux is more secure than Windows. The researchers surveyed 500 Linux developers and found that 92
percent had never had a machine affected by malicious code. Fewer than 7 percent said they'd been victims of three or more hacker intrusions.
Unix V. Linux ? What's really at stake?
IT industry consultant Rob Enderle came down hard on Linux and the concept of free software Tuesday at the second day of SCO Forum in Las Vegas. "I've always had a sense of [BS] and bullies," Enderle told the crowd of SCO resellers, software partners, customers, and employees. The implication, based upon Enderle's presentation, is that IBM and a faction of the Linux vendor and user community are resorting to threats and misinformation to undermine SCO's efforts to pursue legal action to
The PeopleSoft Divide
The Oracle-PeopleSoft question has divided BI specialists very starkly, and very evenly.
SmartAdvice: Link Business Units With Common Architecture
Empower your company with a defined enterprise information architecture, The Advisory Council says. Also, the pros and cons of using software and hardware emulation tools; and a review of network architecture means taking the big-picture view.
SCO has a plan, and (this time) it doesn't involve the inside of a courtroom
More than a year into its contentious battle with IBM, Novell, and the Linux community over Unix's possible role in the development of Linux, the SCO Group still believes there's a place for its Unix-based products. Even as Linux grabs share from competing operating systems, a recent Forrester Research study notes that Unix isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
Opinion: Focus On RFID's Possibilities, Manage The Pitfalls
RFID's future in corporate application portfolios depends on companies leveraging RFID to improve their responsiveness and become more adaptive. But that will take time. Just as we gave the bar code time to mature, we must demonstrate the same level of patience with RFID and its technology suppliers.
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