Computerworld articles from May 2009

Computerworld archives from May 2009

Responses to: can Obama curb offshoring with tax code?(ONLINE CHATTER)(Letter to the editor)
May 18, 2009... May 4, 2009 Writer Patrick Thibodeau has hit on exactly the core issue. IT companies aren't generating new income within foreign countries. What they are doing is replacing American workers with cheaper labor to perform outsourcing work on...

Responses to: in China, $700 puts a spammer in business.(ONLINE CHATTER)(Letter to the editor)
May 18, 2009... May 8, 2009 The only way to stop all of the spam, phishing and botnets is to go after the ISPs. They are the gateways to the rest of the Internet for everybody who wants or needs to get there. They more than anyone else have the ability to...

The week ahead.(Brief article)(Calendar)
May 18, 2009... MONDAY: The EMC World 09 user conference kicks off in Orlando and continues through Thursday. TUESDAY: The Interop IT conference and expo opens in Las Vegas. Also, Hewlett-Packard is scheduled to announce financial results for its second...

Intel set to appeal Ec's $1.44b antitrust fine.(LEGAL ISSUES)
May 18, 2009... INTEL CORP. said it plans to appeal last week's European Commission decision to fine the company $1.44 billion for violating antitrust laws. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The EC found Intel guilty of paying rebates to computer manufacturers...

Windows 7 on track for holiday sales.(OPERATING SYSTEMS)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... Microsoft Corp. is on track to wrap up work on Windows 7 and ship it to computer makers in August, a company executive said last week. Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of the Windows engineering group, said in a blog post that "if the...

Heartland breach cost firm $12.6m - so far.(DATA SECURITY)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... HEARTLAND Payment Systems Inc. last week disclosed that it has so far spent or set aside more than $12.6 million to cover costs related to a major data breach that the credit card payment processor disclosed in January. [ILLUSTRATION...

Microsoft Corp.(Short Takes)(Microsoft Corp. released patch to fix vulnerabilities)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... Microsoft Corp. released a single patch that fixes 14 separate vulnerabilities, 11 of which were rated "critical," including a six-week-old bug in its PowerPoint software. Hackers could exploit the flaw by duping a user into opening a malformed...

Hewlett-Packard Co.(Short Takes)(Hewlett-Packard Co. has recalled lithium-ion batteries )(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... Hewlett-Packard Co. has recalled about 70,000 lithium-ion batteries used in several HP and Compaq computer models. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said the batteries pose a fire hazard.

Rimini Street Inc.(Short Takes)(Rimini Street Inc. plans to support SAP AG product lines)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... Rimini Street Inc., a provider of third-party support services for Oracle apps, announced plans to offer support packages for multiple SAP product lines.

Apple Inc.(Short Takes)(Apple Inc. patched vulnerabilities in the Mac OS X operating system)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... Apple Inc. patched 67 vulnerabilities in the Mac OS X operating system. Twenty-six of the vulnerabilities carried Apple's "arbitrary code execution" label, which means the flaws are critical and could be exploited to hijack a Macintosh...

Cisco takes aim at WiMax.(MOBILE & WIRELESS)(Cisco Systems Inc. and Clearwire Corp. announced an alliance )(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... CLEARWIRE CORP. and Cisco Systems Inc. last week announced an alliance aimed at expanding high-speed WiMax wireless services nationwide using Cisco products as the core network infrastructure. The companies said that Clearwire is already...

Shuttle crew installs new backup system on hubble.(IT IN GOVERNMENT)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... NASA ASTRONAUTS last week installed a new backup computer on the Hubble Space Telescope during the first of five space walks planned by the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Last fall, the Hubble's primary...

Between the lines.(Cartoon)
May 18, 2009... I DON'T THINK PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THE CHALLENGES WE FACE I'M TALKING ABOUT TWITTERING WITH THESE GLOVES ON. YOU MEAN LIKE TAKING SPACE WALKS TO REPAIR SATELLITES? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Advanced Micro Devices Inc.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s processors market share)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... IDC said that Advanced Micro Devices Inc.'s share of processor shipments reached 22.3% during the first quarter, up 4.6 percentage points from the previous quarter, while Intel Corp.'s share fell 4.7 percentage points to 77.3%.

Samsung Electronics Co.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Samsung Electronics Co. ships memory card)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... Samsung Electronics Co. shipped a 32GB NAND memory card, double the highest capacity of cards previously available.

Six years ago.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... SIX YEARS AGO: The SCO Group Inc. said it was abandoning its Linux business and warned commercial Linux users that they might be liable for violations of SCO intellectual property that it alleged exist in the Linux source code.

Nortel opens new ops center in India.(Global Dispatches)(Nortel Networks Corp.)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... BANGALORE, India-Nortel Networks Corp. last week announced that it has opened a global network operations center here to help remotely manage and support the networks of its carrier and enterprise customers in Asia, Europe and North and South...

Justice ministry seeks new CIO.(Global Dispatches)(United Kingdom's Ministry of Justice)(chief information officer)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... LONDON - The U.K. Ministry of Justice has begun a search for a new CIO just weeks after the National Audit Office issued a report criticizing the agency's overdue, overbudget National Offender Management Information System project. The new...

Briefly noted.(Landis+Gyr extends contract with Unisys Corp.)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... Landis+Gyr, a Zug, Switzerland-based provider of energy metering and management products, has extended its IT outsourcing contract with Unisys Corp.'s Swiss subsidiary by five years. The monetary value of the deal was not disclosed. The Unisys...

Start-up costs slow spread of de-duplication: IT is leery even though the technology promises to cut costs and storage needs.(NEWS ANALYSIS)
May 18, 2009... WHILE data de-duplication is a relatively easy way for companies to consolidate storage systems, the technology has yet to attract the widespread attention of IT managers. According to Gartner Inc., only about 30% of corporations have deployed...

Changed antitrust rules could curb tech mergers: the DOJ repeals a Bushera policy that 'raised hurdles' in federal antitrust probes.(NEWS ANALYSIS)(Department of Justice)
May 18, 2009... A SHIFT in U.S. Department of Justice antitrust policy announced last week could blunt the expansion or merger plans of IT vendors, according to legal experts. In speeches last week before the Center for American Progress and the U.S....

Dawn M. Taylor: the researcher talks about decoding brain signals to bring sight, movement and sensation to the disabled.(THE GRILL)(Interview)
May 18, 2009... Dawn M. Taylor is a research scientist at the Cleveland Functional Electrical Stimulation Center, a consortium of partners Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland VA Medical Center and MetroHealth Medical Center. She is a co-author of...

Are computers transforming humanity? The answer is obvious, the implications profound.(Cover story)
May 18, 2009... IMAGINE A WORLD where your phone is smart enough to order and pay for your morning coffee. No more giving orders, handing over your payment or waiting in lines. No more face-to-face chit-chat or human interaction For many, this might seem like...

Developing clinical dashboards: these eight steps helped the University of Pennsylvania Health System successfully complete six projects.(BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE)
May 18, 2009... HOSPITALS, MEDICAL CENTERS and other health systems are increasingly using digital dashboard technology to provide relevant, up-to-the-minute information to clinicians in a visually rich format to improve the quality of patient care. ...

IT recycling pitfalls: a few simple steps can keep an IT green policy from turning into your own ecological disaster.(HARDWARE)(information technology)
May 18, 2009... WENDY BURCHARD, procurement coordinator in the IS department at the University of Richmond in Virginia, knows all about the pitfalls of recycling old equipment. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Burchard discovered that the firm that was carting...

PC energy use still unmanaged: most companies lack PC power management programs, which means they're wasting energy and money.(HARDWARE)
May 18, 2009... Most IT shops aren't managing PC power use within their organizations, which means they're passing up big savings, especially in regions with high energy costs. In a recent Forrester Research Inc. study of PC power management practices at...

You want to put what on the web? The company has fast-tracked a project to make payroll and accounting accessible from a front-end Web service.(SECURITY MANAGER'S JOURNAL)
May 18, 2009... READERS WHO, like me, live and breathe security will cringe when they read this sentence: My company plans to build a front-end Web service for our payroll and accounting system. Internal financial systems are the most sensitive part of...

Desktop Linux: why you shouldn't care.(OPINION)(Column)
May 18, 2009... RECENTLY, the Web site analytics company Net Applications came out with figures that showed that in April, the percentage of "client devices" used to surf the Web that were running Linux crossed the 1% level for the first time ever--1.02%, to...

Laid off, poorly.(Career Watch)(Brief article)
May 18, 2009... Telonu.com - pronounced "tell on you" - another new workplace-rating site (Career Watch looked at Glassdoor.com on Feb. 23), has asked its growing membership to rate how companies are handling layoffs and other things related to doing business...

David Noble: the author of gallery of best resumes tells you how to create a resume that will get noticed.(Q&A)(Interview)
May 18, 2009... What are effective ways to make a resume stand out? Ensure that you present the most important information about you just below your contact information. Susan Whitcomb, a professional resume writer in Fresno, Calif., describes in her book...

Shark Tank: true tales of it life as told to sharky.
May 18, 2009... Communications Breakdown This big music, film and new-media festival attracts thousands of attendees - and it seems like they've all got 3G mobile phones. And they're all using them. And then, not surprisingly, the 3G network crashes. And...

In recession, take time to save time.(OPINION)(Column)
May 18, 2009... FOR THOSE of us still lucky enough to have jobs during this Not Quite a Depression (Yet), the cratering economy has likely affected our workdays in one of two ways. In places like luxury stores or high-end brokerages, some workers find that...

Responses to: desktop Linux: why you shouldn't care.(ONLINE CHATTER)(Letter to the editor)
May 25, 2009... May 18, 2009 I had no issues installing Ubuntu 9.04 to my desktop, and using Synaptic to install software is a snap. So please tell me why my experience is different than yours. Perhaps what you mean is that you can't install Windows...

Response to: in recession, take time to save time.(ONLINE CHATTER)(Letter to the editor)
May 25, 2009... May 18, 2009 In theory, author Sharon Machlis is correct. Unfortunately, it is rare that management incents such behavior, let alone rewards it. As the fear of job loss increases, the willingness to take chances (read invest time in...

The week ahead.(Brief article)(Calendar)
May 25, 2009... MONDAY: The annual Computerworld Honors Program awards ceremony takes place in Washington. MONDAY: The 12th annual IEEE International Interconnect Technology Conference, sponsored by the IEEE Electron Devices Society and the Japan Society...

The search war is on: Microsoft unveils Bing.(INTERNET TECHNOLOGIES)
May 25, 2009... AFTER WEEKS of speculation, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer last week took the wraps off the company's new search site, called Bing, at The Wall Street Journal's All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, Calif. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

Group creates iPhone security benchmark.(MOBILE & WIRELESS)(Center for Internet Security )(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... The Center for Internet Security last week released a security benchmark for Apple Inc.'s iPhone that it said could help IT managers better protect data stored on the device. The benchmark, dubbed CIS Security Configuration Benchmark for...

Fed CIOs look for signs of opportunity in cloud.(CLOUD COMPUTING)(chief information officer)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... WASHINGTON ALTHOUGH TOP federal IT officials say they see value in cloud computing services, many are holding off on widespread use of the technology until vendors can adapt their offerings to account for unique government needs and budget...

Microsoft Corp.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... A federal jury in Texas found Microsoft Corp. guilty of infringing on software patents owned by i4i Inc. Microsoft was ordered to pay the maker of document management tools $200 million. The software vendor plans to appeal.

Google Inc.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... Google Inc. released an early version of its Wave collaboration and communication tool to developers. Details were sketchy, but Google said the tool offers a combination of e-mail, instant-messaging, blogging, wiki, multimedia and...

Dell Inc.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... Dell Inc. reported that its first-quarter profits fell 63%, to $290 million, because of declining PC sales and S185 million in restructuring charges. Sales for the period totaled $12.3 billion, 23% lower than last year.

NetApp Inc.(Short Takes)(NetApp Inc. to acquires Data Domain Inc.)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... NetApp Inc. has agreed to acquire Data Domain Inc., a maker of disk-based backup products that use data de-duplication technology. The $1.5 billion deal is expected to close this summer.

Spam finds new paths into corporate nets.(SECURITY)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... UNSOLICITED E-MAIL accounted for 90.4% of all messages received on corporate networks during April, an increase of 5.1% from a month earlier, according to a report released May 26 by Symantec Corp.'s MessageLabs Intelligence unit. The...

Intel delays Itanium server chip till 2010.(HARDWARE)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... INTEL CORP. has once again delayed the release of its next-generation Itanium server processor to develop undisclosed "application scalability" enhancements. The schedule set May 21 calls for the server chip, code-named Tukwila, to ship in...

Between the lines.(Cartoon)
May 25, 2009... OUR STUDIES SHOW THAT 90% OF E-MAIL IS SPAM. SEND A REPORT OUT TO ALL OUR USERS. THAT MAKES IT 91%. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

VMware Inc.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... VMware Inc. agreed to buy a 5% stake in Terremark Worldwide Inc. for about $20 million. Miami-based Terremark is a provider of collocation and managed IT services that use VMware's virtualization software.

Time Warner Inc.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... Time Warner Inc. announced that it will spin off its struggling AOL LLC unit.

10 years ago.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... 10 YEARS AGO: The U.S. Department of Justice agreed to approve Computer Associates' $3.5 billion purchase of Platinum Technology International Inc. if CA divested itself of six products for managing mainframe systems.

Russian firm buys stake in Facebook.(Global, Dispatches)(Digital Sky Technologies)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... MOSCOW -- Digital Sky Technologies last week acquired a 1.96% stake in Facebook Inc. for $200 million (U.S.). The Moscow-based investment firm said the deal gives privately held Facebook a valuation of $10 billion, one-third less than its...

Red Hat sues to void Microsoft pact.(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... BERN, Switzerland -- Red Hat Inc. last week said it has filed a lawsuit in the Federal Administrative Court of Switzerland seeking the cancellation of a three-year no-bid contract that the Swiss Federal Bureau for Buildings and Logistics...

Briefly noted.(Sean Finnan resigns as managing director of Electronic Data Systems Corp.)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... Sean Finnan has resigned as managing director of Electronic Data Systems Corp.'s U.K. operation to join IBM's Global Services unit, reportedly as global deal-maker in the unit's Zurich office. Finnan had worked at EDS since 1985. ...

Budget woes could boost government offshoring: political pressure may not keep outsourcing in check as state tax revenues plummet.(NEWS ANALYSIS)
May 25, 2009... IN 2005, the New Jersey legislature tried to put the brakes on IT offshoring by passing a law requiring that all state work be performed in the U.S. It was one of the most restrictive measures ever passed by a state. But try as it might, New...

Air Force disputes talk of GPS failure: GAO warns that the service could face interruptions.(NEWS ANALYSIS)
May 25, 2009... THE U.S. AIR FORCE late last month disputed a General Accountability Office report concluding that the Global Positioning System used by the military and millions of motorists worldwide may be in danger of disruption unless aging satellites are...

Caroline Ross: an MIT professor with a penchant for tiny technologies sees big opportunities for nanoscale magnets to enhance computer performance.(THE GRILL)(Interview)
May 25, 2009... Working at a microscopic level, Caroline Ross actually creates and modifies MRAM, or magnetoresistive random-access memory. When we store our birthday photos and thesis papers on our PCs, our thought process usually doesn't go further than...

Can you trust the cloud? Outages at a cloud computing service could hurt your business. The question is whether your in-house systems can do better.(Cover story)
May 25, 2009... IN APRIL of last year, Satoshi Nakajima, founder of Washington-based Big Canvas Inc., was eagerly inviting new customers to subscribe to his company's flagship product, PhotoShare, which lets users swap Apple iPhone photos for free. ...

How to stay up in a down economy: laid-off or overworked, IT pros still need to mind their emotional health. Here are six ways to keep your outlook bright in dark times.(CAREERS)
May 25, 2009... IT DOESN'T take a $250 visit to a psychotherapist to confirm what you feel in your gut each morning when you wake up--it's depressing out there. With market volatility, economic instability, pink slips and the ongoing threat of yet another...

SaaS: bailing out government IT: but security and lock-in are lingering concerns.(SaaS)(Software as a Service)
May 25, 2009... NEXT YEAR, as directed by the Constitution, the U.S. Census Bureau will enumerate the country's citizens. That can be tricky when some of them want to go unnoticed. But this time the Census Bureau will use software as a service to try to...

So far, the cloud seems too leaky: for a security manager, even a test environment could be too vulnerable when it's located in the Web-accessible cloud.(SECURITY MANAGER'S JOURNAL)
May 25, 2009... WHAT GREAT timing! I had no sooner returned from the RSA Conference, where my focus was on cloud computing, than I was invited to a meeting to discuss our first venture into "the cloud." The IT department has decided to contract with an...

Don't sign away your future: noncompete agreements can hurt your IT career, unless you check the fine print.(CAREERS)
May 25, 2009... CAN SIGNING a standard workplace document derail your career plans? Yes, says Jerry Luftman, executive director of graduate IS programs at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. He says a former student almost lost out on a big break...

Monitor your sponsors.(OPINION)(Column)
May 25, 2009... IT HAS become an article of faith that projects without sponsors will inevitably crash and burn. But unexamined beliefs can lead us astray, and we need to be thoughtful about how we apply any maxim. In the case of project sponsorship, more is...

Disappearing jobs.(Career Watch)(Brief article)
May 25, 2009... Forrester Research expects the total number of U.S. IT jobs to fall by 1.2% this year compared with 2008. The decline in employment will be even steeper within IT vendors. NUMBER OFJOBS 2005 2006 2007 2008 * ...

The CIO at Norton healthcare in Louisville, Ky., answers questions on taking a lower-level position and what skills you need during a slump.(ASK A PREMIER 100 IT LEADER)
May 25, 2009... I have a lot of experience in networking, but I've been out of work since the beginning of 2008.1 seem to be joined by more people all the time, so there's a lot of competition for jobs. I've got nearly 15 years of solid experience and great...

SharkTank: true tales of it life as told to Sharky.
May 25, 2009... Testing, Redefined Pilot fish and his team are called on to investigate a large computer that's running slowly because users are just abandoning their sessions instead of quitting properly. "We wrote a script that would detect the rogue...

Is Microsoft shooting itself in the foot?(OPINION)(Column)
May 25, 2009... BELIEVE IT OR NOT, I rather like Windows 7. I still think XP SP3 is what you want if performance matters most to you, but 7 does OK on the racetrack, and most of Vista's biggest annoyances have either been fixed or dumped. Technically speaking,...