eWeek articles from October 2003

eWeek archives from October 2003

Zeroing In on Site and Security Flaws.
October 1, 2003... Building software and systems that actually work is a battle that needs to be fought with rifles, not with shotguns. The targets of developer effort need to be identified precisely and picked off positively, leaving not a single problem behind...

Palm Rolls Out Pair of Corporate Handhelds.(Palm tungsten T3 and Tungsten E)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Palm Inc. on Wednesday announced two new handheld computers for the corporate market, one focused on display capability and the other on cost. The Tungsten T3 features a 320-by-480 color transflective display that can switch from landscape...

SAP Brings Data Into Better Harmony.(Master Data Management )(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... SAP AG announced Tuesday a new module for its NetWeaver technology stack that promises to help companies harmonize data across applications and IT systems. Announced at its SAP TechEd '03 Europe conference held this week in Basel,...

Microsoft Agrees to $10.5M Settlement.
October 1, 2003... BALTIMORE (AP)--Microsoft Corp. has agreed to pay $10.5 million to consumers who said they were overcharged when they bought software directly from the company, according to a settlement filed Tuesday. The agreement in the class-action...

Sun Inks Utility Computing Deal.(with SchlumbergerSema)
October 1, 2003... Sun Microsystems Inc. is partnering with SchlumbergerSema to offer hosted utility computing capabilities to customers in the energy, finance, public sector and telecommunications industries. Houston-based SchlumbergerSema, a business...

Palm Fights Back.(name change and new PDAs)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Palm, the market-leading PDA company, will have a new name (palmOne as of mid-November) and a new lineup of handhelds to combat the raft of Microsoft Windows Mobile PDAs that have surfaced. The line now consists of seven models, including...

H-1B Visa Cap Falls to 65,000.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... With skyrocketing IT unemployment as a backdrop, the U.S. Congress let the H-1B visa limit drop back to 65,000 on Tuesday. The limit on H-1B visas had been boosted to 195,000 in 2000 in response to companies that claimed they couldn't hire...

IBM Delivers Application Modernization Tools.(including Host Access Transformation Services 5.0, IBM Host Access Client Package and WebSphere Studio Asset Analyzer 3.1)
October 1, 2003... IBM has used the combined resources of IBM Software Group, IBM Global Services and IBM Research to develop a set of tools and services to help customers modernize and transform legacy applications. The three groups, company executives said,...

Microsoft Makes More Speech Server Noise.(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
October 1, 2003... NEW YORK--Microsoft Corp. is using this week's SpeechTEK conference here to talk about the momentum behind another pending member of its Windows System Server family: Microsoft Speech Server. Microsoft released at the show the names of five...

Two Major Databases Spring Security Leaks.
October 1, 2003... Two major databases have sprung security leaks. The security firm Application Security Inc. reported this week that IBM's DB2 Universal Database and MySQL AB's MySQL open-source database have a total of three vulnerabilities that range from...

PLM Software Maker Agile Acquires Tradec.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Product lifecycle management application developer Agile Software Corp. announced Wednesday the acquisition of Tradec Inc. San Jose, Calif.-based Tradec makes cost management software to help manufacturing companies reduce direct material...

Open-Source Pros Debate the Process of Innovation.
October 1, 2003... NEW YORK--While open source is viewed as the movement to bring the power of software development to the people, some major proponents of the space say the most innovation is accomplished by a core group of developers. Speaking at the RVC...

EMC Releases New Mid-range NAS.(EMC Celerra NS600, NetWin 200,NS600GS and NS600G)(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... New network-attached storage products from EMC Corp. aim to give small- and mid-size companies more storage options, officials said today. The new NAS models, available now, include an entry-level version of the Celerra NS600, and two...

OpenOffice.org Launches Update, Defines Version 2.0.
October 1, 2003... OpenOffice.org on Wednesday released the latest version of its open-source competitor to Microsoft Office as it heads toward a major architectural revamp by early 2005. The OpenOffice.org 1.1, available now for Linux, Windows and Sun...

PeopleSoft Cuts Jobs After Merger.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... NEW YORK (AP)--PeopleSoft Inc. has begun dismissing employees as part of its previously announced plans to cut about 7 percent of its workers, following the purchase of rival J.D. Edwards & Co. PeopleSoft began notifying workers last week,...

SCO Sets its Sights on SGI in Linux Battle.
October 1, 2003... Silicon Graphics Inc. is the latest vendor to become ensnarled in The SCO Group's battle over the use of Unix code in the Linux operating system. SCO, of Lindon, Utah, is threatening to terminate SGI's license of Unix System V as of Oct....

Voice of Experience: Mercy Health Partners CIO Jim Albin.(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... Manager's Profile: Jim Albin came to Toledo-based Mercy Health, a division of Catholic Healthcare Partners that operates hospitals in northwestern Ohio, three years ago. As chief information officer, he shepherded 4,800 projects in his Pacific...

Open-Source, Closed Minds.
October 1, 2003... There's something obvious to anyone close to technology today: Nonproprietary technology helps proprietary enterprise. For example, the global positioning system was set free for commercial development by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. The...

Seek and Ye Shall Find.(use Google)(Column)
October 1, 2003... Need to find out which U.S. cities have the largest numbers of Korean-born residents for the launch of a new product? Google it. Want to locate someone you used to work with to offer her a job? Google her. Looking for the latest news about your...

C-Meter: Modest Rise.
October 1, 2003... While jobs continued to be lost during the jobless recovery, other positive economic news helped to slightly boost this month's Confidence Meter survey, conducted from August 21 through September 4. The period saw advances in both the Dow Jones...

Research: Are Successful Leaders Born or Made?(Brief Article)
October 1, 2003... The results of this month's research are available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. (To download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader plug-in, click here.) *Are Successful Leaders Born or Made? 81% Of CIOs Believe Leadership Can Be Taught 68% Say...

Where are All the Women IT Leaders?(Industry Overview)
October 1, 2003... It will come as no surprise to readers that, according to this month's survey, men overwhelmingly outnumber women in IT leadership positions (86.1 percent versus 13.9 percent). What is surprising, however, is that 16.4 percent of IT executives...

Sarbanes-Oxley: Does Honesty Pay Off?
October 1, 2003... For Bob Travatello, the benefit of complying with Sarbanes-Oxley is calculated in prison time: "The ROI is keeping my CEO and CFO out of jail." Travatello is chief information officer for Blue Rhino, a Winston-Salem, N.C., provider of...

Waters Corp. Does Global ERP in 99 Days.
October 1, 2003... More than 100 handpicked senior managers were summoned to a conference room at the Milford, Mass., headquarters of Waters Corp., a manufacturer of analytical instruments for the pharmaceutical and scientific industries. They were mostly in...

Noveon Standardizes To Cut Tech Costs.
October 1, 2003... Noveon needed to boost its returns, fast. So the billion-dollar specialty chemicals company loaded up on low-cost standard computers. The Task: Create an almost entirely new computing and communications infrastructure for a billion-dollar...

The Death of the Handheld Computer.(Industry Overview)
October 2, 2003... Whatever happened to the handheld computer market? A segment that seemed to have limitless potential just a few years ago now seems to be flirting with irrelevance. Right now, there are too many vendors in the space. Dell is driving the...

Tech Vendors: Don't Curb Individual Liberties for Security.(conference on regional homeland security )
October 2, 2003... Security technology is growing increasingly sophisticated--so much so that computers can now identify and track the movements, physical characteristics, and chemical traces of people without much help from human beings. Over time, those...

Siebel, IBM Announce Hosted CRM Offering.(Brief Article)
October 2, 2003... Siebel Systems Inc. and IBM announced Thursday that the two companies will jointly offer a hosted customer relationship management service to be known as Siebel CRM OnDemand. The two companies will team up to develop, market and deliver the...

Report: DOJ Readies Antitrust Case Against Oracle.
October 2, 2003... A report published Thursday suggests that the U.S. Department of Justice is readying its antitrust suit against Oracle Corp. stemming from the company's bid to take over ERP rival PeopleSoft Inc. The report, published in USA Today this...

Allaire on Lookout for Hot Technologies.(Interview)
October 2, 2003... Jeremy Allaire, an industry thought leader and software visionary, left his job as chief technology officer at Macromedia Inc. this year to become technologist-in-residence at Cambridge, Mass.-based venture capital firm General Catalyst...

California Vote Faces Security Flaws.
October 2, 2003... The voting machines that almost derailed the Oct. 7 California recall election are all being replaced. But controversy over voting technology is far from finished in the Golden State--or the rest of the country. For local officials in charge of...

Faulty Patch Leaves IE Open to Attack.(new Trojan, known as Qhost-1)
October 2, 2003... An incomplete patch has opened the door to the widespread exploitation of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer, and security experts say that there are at least four different methods being used by attackers to compromise vulnerable PCs. ...

Lawsuit Takes on Microsoft Security Flaws.(Brief Article)
October 2, 2003... Has the worm finally turned for Microsoft Corp.? The company on Thursday confirmed that it had received a proposed class-action lawsuit targeting Windows' vulnerability to computer viruses, which could trigger "massive cascading failures"...

Security Class Action Suit: Can They Do That?(Microsoft)(Brief Article)
October 2, 2003... Just when you thought Microsoft was impermeable to security lawsuits, as a result of careful wording in its licensing terms and conditions, a group of Californians are poised to levy a class-action suit against the Redmond software maker as a...

DB2 Security Dinged Again.
October 2, 2003... IBM's DB2 UDB enterprise relational database has two more holes, adding up to a total of six reported within the past three weeks. The two most recent security vulnerabilities were reported on Thursday by security firm PenTest Ltd. The...

VeriSign Now Faces Class Action Suit Over Redirection.
October 2, 2003... The furor over VeriSign Inc.'s redirect service for mistyped or unregistered Web domains isn't about to die down as the body overseeing Web addressing begins taking public comments on the issue and a third lawsuit attacks the service. A...

Cisco Targets Small Offices With New IP Telephone Packages.(Cisco Call Manager Express and Cisco Unity Express)
October 2, 2003... Cisco Systems Inc. Thursday launched a pair of new IP telephony offerings designed to reduce the cost and complexity of deployment in small offices. Cisco made it possible for users to deploy call processing capabilities through add-on IOS...

Bottom Line Per....QVC CIO Rob Cochran.(Interview)
October 2, 2003... Sixteen years ago, Rob Cochran joined the then-fledgling retailer hawking jewelry, apparel, electronics and other merchandise on television. The company, recently acquired by Liberty Media Corp. from Comcast Corp., reeled in $4.4 billion in net...

Duo Enhance Videoconferencing Offerings.(Polycom's VSX 7000 and Tandberg's products)
October 3, 2003... Polycom Ltd. and Tandberg ASA are rolling out upgrades to their respective videoconferencing offerings that the vendors say will improve ease of use and boost video quality. Polycom, best known for its videoconferencing technologies, next...

Siebel Betting Hosted Offering Will Extend Enterprise Reach.(Siebel CRM OnDemand )
October 3, 2003... Siebel Systems Inc. plans to sell its new Siebel CRM OnDemand service heavily into its existing customer base, according to the executive heading up the company's latest foray into hosted customer relationship management services. Siebel...

Sybase Looks to Lower Cost of Operations.(Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.5.1)
October 3, 2003... Sybase Inc. is tackling TCO with the latest version of its enterprise database, Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.5.1, released next week. New goodies are aimed at better manageability and at keeping the database up 24x7. One such...

IE Gets Blame for Theft of Half Life 2 Code.(Brief Article)
October 3, 2003... Security experts are blaming known but unpatched vulnerabilities in Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer for the theft and distribution of the source code for a much anticipated new video game. The source code for Valve Corp.'s Half Life 2,...

VeriSign Suspends its Redirect Service.(SiteFinder)
October 3, 2003... VeriSign on Friday suspended its controversial service that redirected mistyped or unregistered domain names after the body overseeing Web addressing took its toughest stance yet against it. VeriSign officials told eWeek.com that the...

A Richer RSS Format in the Works.(interview with Jeffrey Allaire of General Catalyst Partners)(Interview)
October 3, 2003... Jeremy Allaire is hoping to transform the way people exchange information on the Internet. In an interview this week, Allaire, the technologist-in-residence at General Catalyst Partners and former chief technology officer at Macromedia...

Security, Busines to Star at MS Partner Expo.
October 3, 2003... Brand-new small-business wares -- including the Microsoft Business Network, Windows Small Business Server 2003 and new demand-planning modules for its Great Plains and Axapta applications -- are expected to be among the highlights of...

RFID Moves into Public Library.(San Francisco Public Library)
October 3, 2003... SAN FRANCISCO (AP)--A civil liberties watchdog group is expressing concern over the San Francisco Public Library's plans to track books by inserting computer chips into each tome. Library officials approved a plan Thursday to install tiny...

New Microsoft Small-Biz Wares in the Hopper.(Brief Article)
October 3, 2003... Brand-new small-business wares -- including the Microsoft Business Network, Windows Small Business Server 2003 and new demand-planning modules for its Great Plains and Axapta applications -- are expected to be among the highlights of...

Storage Digest: Seagate Ships Lindows on Hard Drives.(Excerpt)
October 4, 2003... Here are a variety of storage-related stories from around the Web. The subjects include storage hardware and software as well as financial news and industry trends related to the storage market. Hardware Toshiba Preps Low-Noise Blue...

Storage Digest: Dot Hill Upgrades SAN Management Software.
October 5, 2003... Here are a variety of storage-related stories from around the Web. The subjects include storage hardware and software as well as financial news and industry trends related to the storage market. Hardware Promise Introduces Hot-Swap...

ClearSight Offers Graphical View of Network Protocols.
October 5, 2003... ClearSight Networks, formerly AppDancer Networks, on Monday will launch new protocol analyzers that provide visibility into the application layer for less sophisticated users. While most protocol analyzers operate at lower layers of the...

HP Sweetens Pot for Linux Migration.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... This summer, Sun Microsystems Inc. rolled out a program aimed at luring AlphaServer customers away from Hewlett-Packard Co. and its plans to standardize on Intel Corp.'s 64-bit Itanium chip. On Friday, HP struck back, offering its own...

Newest Xeon Speeds Past Predecessors.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Intel Corp. on Monday is rolling out its fastest Xeon processor for dual-processor servers and workstations. The new chip, at 3.2GHz, eclipses the current fastest Xeon, at 3.06GHz. It also features 1MB of cache and a 533MHz front-side bus....

NetScreen to Acquire Neoteris.
October 6, 2003... Security appliance vendor NetScreen Technologies Inc. on Monday announced that it has agreed to acquire Neoteris Inc. for $265 million. The move signals NetScreen's intention to expand its product portfolio and become a more diversified...

Seven Things To Keep In Mind About Longhorn.
October 6, 2003... As the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) countdown clock ticks down -- at this writing, we're 19 days, 14 hours and 36 minutes away from the Longhorn stampede, according to one enthusiast's Web site -- it's a good time to start...

Panel: Offshore Outsourcing Is Here to Stay.
October 6, 2003... BOSTON--The United States ought not to fear the move to offshore outsourcing, according to speakers at a panel discussion sponsored by the ITAA here. "Offshoring will not mean the demise of the U.S. economy," said Nariman Behravesh, chief...

Commerce One Preps Next Iteration of Conductor Platform.(Conductor 6.5)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Once known for its procurement software and e-marketplace capabilities, Commerce One Inc. is now focusing on business process integration. On Oct. 13, the Pleasanton, Calif., company will announce the next iteration of its Conductor platform...

Alcatel Embraces VOIP.(through eBusiness Networking Division )
October 6, 2003... Unified messaging has yet to be embraced by most IT shops because of its complexity and cost. But Alcatel S.A., a relative newcomer to IP telephony in North America, will try to change that with new IMAP4 support in its Linux-based OmniPCX...

Bandwidth: The Sequel.(Column)
October 6, 2003... While my computer is busy pulling down the latest Microsoft patches, I'd like to share new information about the amount of bandwidth these downloads consume. In my Sept. 22 column, I said Microsoft has marked its Windows Update files...

NetBackup Gains Speed, Strength.(Veritas Software's NetBackup 5.0)
October 6, 2003... Veritas Software Corp. is planning to pump up enterprise backup with an upgrade that offers improved speed, capacity and capability. The company in January will ship NetBackup 5.0, an upgrade to Version 4.5 that according to sources...

HP Brings Cheaper Gigabit Ethernet to Network's Edge.
October 6, 2003... Hewlett-Packard Co.'s ProCurve Networking unit today launched a refresh of its Adaptive Edge Architecture products spanning wireless access to the core of the network. In delivering on its strategy to deliver greater performance, security,...

Nokia Makes Enterprise Push.(with Nokia Access Mobilizer)
October 6, 2003... As part of a new enterprise push, Nokia Corp. is readying its first appliance that provides handheld device users secure access to their corporate data. The Nokia Access Mobilizer, or NAM, which is due this week from the company's new...

Remotely Possible.
October 6, 2003... Hunkered before his TV, Spence felt more like a circus performer than a couch potato, as he juggled three remotes, a brewski and his customary extra-large bag of Cheetos. As suds splashed across the beleaguered Busybody's Broyhill, he wondered...

Workplace to Take Notes, Domino.
October 6, 2003... IBM's lotus software division plans to bring its messaging and collaboration platforms, the legacy Domino offering and emerging Workplace suite, into feature parity by 2005 in anticipation of merging them. The move means that the parallel...

EDS, Agile Expand PLM.(EDS' Teamcenter CPG )
October 6, 2003... Companies looking to invest in PLM applications will have more choice through new offerings from Electronic Data Systems Corp. and Agile Software Corp. EDS will release at its Product Development & Management Association conference in...

H-1B Visa Limit Dropped.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... With skyrocketing it unemployment as a backdrop, the U.S. Congress last week let the H-1B visa limit drop back to 65,000. In 2000, the limit on H-1B visas was boosted to 195,000 in response to companies that said they couldn't hire enough...

HP Itanium 2 Workstation Fills Memory Need.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Hewlett-Packard Co. on Monday is coming out with another Itanium 2-based workstation, this one aimed at design engineers. The Palo Alto, Calif., company in September rolled out the single-processor zx2000 workstation running on Intel...

Handhelds for Corporations.(Palm Tungsten T3 and Tungsten E)
October 6, 2003... Palm Inc. is rolling out two new handheld computers for the corporate market, one focused on display capability and the other on getting cost-conscious customers to upgrade. The Tungsten T3 features a 320-by-480-dpi (dot-per-inch) color...

Microsoft Turns to 'Small' Needs.
October 6, 2003... As Microsoft Corp. prepares to release its Windows Small Business Server 2003 this week, company officials are acknowledging that they probably haven't done the best job meeting the needs of small businesses. That is, up until now. The...

Microsoft, Lindows Trade Shots in Ongoing Dispute.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... The war of words between Lindows.com and Microsoft last week escalated as the two companies disputed Lindows.com's efforts to process consumers' claims in a $1.1 billion California class action lawsuit settlement. Lindows.com, in a letter...

New Business Suite Software Aimed at Manufacturers.(from Microsoft )
October 6, 2003... New software from Microsoft Corp. is extending some of the automation capabilities of high-end business software to midsize manufacturers. The company's Microsoft Business Solutions division will announce this week that it is adding PLM...

Oasis Forms New Web Services Committee.(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Several members of the organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards announced plans to create a global Web services framework for deploying multiplatform Web services globally with the formation of a new technical...

Motorola to Spin Off Chip Operations.
October 6, 2003... Motorola Inc. said Monday it will spin off its chip operations into a separate company, prepping the spin-off for a public offering at a future date. The spin-off will give the company's Semiconductor Products Sector (Motorola SPS) the...

Siebel, IBM Team on CRM.(Siebel CRM OnDemand)
October 6, 2003... Siebel systems inc. is taking another run at hosted CRM. Following its unsuccessful Sales.com hosted customer relationship management service a few years ago, the CRM vendor is now rolling out a new service in conjunction with IBM. Siebel...

States Score in Tax Battle.(Industry Overview)
October 6, 2003... Due to the increasingly heated debate over expanded Internet sales taxes, e-commerce merchants are no longer one big, happy family. Many of the largest online merchants now favor allowing states to collect sales taxes on goods from...

Sun Makes $1 Billion Revision for Q4.(2003)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Sun last week revised its fiscal fourth-quarter financial results with a $1.05 billion charge. Sun's revised fourth-quarter results indicate a $1.04 billion loss for the period ending June 30. The company previously reported a small profit...

Symbol Puts Supply Chain in Hand.(Symbol Technologies MC9000-G)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Symbol technologies this week will introduce a handheld computer aimed at customers that need to manage supply chains remotely. To be available next month, the Symbol MC9000-G comes with the Windows CE or Windows Mobile (Pocket PC 2003)...

Tapping Into Utility Computing.(IBM's Virtual Server Service and Sun Microsystems' hosted services)
October 6, 2003... IBM and Sun Microsystems Inc. are expanding their respective utility computing efforts with hosted offerings that will enable users to remotely access computing power and pay only for resources they use. IBM last week announced it is...

This eWEEK.
October 6, 2003... It's not easy being microsoft. you sell by far the most widely used office productivity suite, but how do you give users reasons to upgrade to the latest version? With the release of Office 2003, Microsoft once again is faced with the arcane...

PeopleSoft Raises Q3 Expectations Again.(2003)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Competition apparently becomes PeopleSoft Inc. In the midst of a hostile takeover bid by rival Oracle Corp. that some speculated would harm PeopleSoft's business, the company today raised its third quarter forecasts--for the second time in...

Security as a Weapon.(Verisgin's Security Intelligence and Control Services)
October 6, 2003... Verisign Inc. has crafted a sweeping new security strategy that pulls data from the company's expansive stable of customers and disseminates it to each in an effort to help customers prepare for, and even prevent, network breaches and hacks....

DB2 Flaws Highlight Vulnerability Concerns.
October 6, 2003... IBM has patched recently uncovered security vulnerabilities in its DB2 Universal Database, but the process it followed has left some security researchers wondering if the company is too tight-lipped on the subject. One researcher is...

E-Licensing Making an Impact on Software Industry.(Industry Overview)
October 6, 2003... SAN JOSE, Calif.--More and more, evolving licensing models will determine the direction and success of the software industry, a top Macromedia Inc. executive said Monday. Macromedia, which took great pains to describe the e-licensing model...

Sun, Manugistics Expand Partnership.(with Sun Microsystems)(Brief Article)
October 6, 2003... Supply chain management software developer Manugistics Group Inc. announced today an expanded alliance with Sun Microsystems Inc. that should help users gain better access to both supply and demand chain applications and data across their...

VeriSign Sets Up Panel to Review SiteFinder.
October 6, 2003... WASHINGTON--VeriSign Inc. executives today defended the SiteFinder Internet service that was suspended last week, arguing that it does not destabilize the Internet and that the company would not profit from the service unless there is a...