Computerworld articles from October 2007

Computerworld archives from October 2007

Ultimate ROI.(EDITOR'S NOTE)(return on investment )(Editorial)
October 1, 2007... A FEW WEEKS AGO, I wrote a column titled "Sacrifice," in which I addressed the idea of national service and the part that IT professionals might play in such a plan. I noted that the cause, especially when that national service is performed in...

China's advantage.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... In The Grill of Sept. 3, Peter J. Williamson talks about China's competitive edge being in its cost innovation. I have just returned from China, and at this point, I don't see the Chinese doing any real innovation. They are simply creating the...

State IT motivated by different factors.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... Patrick Thibodeau highlights recent success within the public sector at consolidating agency data centers into single statewide environments ["States Move Toward the Center on IT--Finally," News Analysis, Sept. 10]. The financial benefits...

The enterprise isn't in Steve Jobs' sights.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 1, 2007... Scot Finnie is absolutely right about Apple not being ready for the enterprise ["Apple Takes a Pass on the Enterprise Prize," Computerworld.com, Sept. 10]. As Apple's former director of federal sales, I can tell you that Steve Jobs does...

Military, oil firm use BI to avert disaster.(BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE)
October 1, 2007... LAS VEGAS BUSINESS intelligence takes on new meaning when it's used to make sure U.S. soldiers get mission-critical equipment when they need it, or to ensure that oil companies can quickly get equipment fixed after a hurricane. ...

Sun raises curtain on Xeon server line.(HARDWARE)(Sun Microsystems Inc.)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Eight months after it agreed to begin using Intel Corp.'s x86 chips again, Sun Microsystems Inc. last week announced a pair of rack-mounted servers built around Xeon processors. The Sun Fire X4450 can hold four of Intel's Xeon 7300...

TJX offers settlement as breach cause is exposed.(SECURITY)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... THE TJX COMPANIES INC. late last month made a settlement offer to victims of a massive data breach at the retailer, just days before Canadian officials released a report disclosing for the first time how the intrusion occurred. ...

Electronic Data Systems Corp.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Electronic Data Systems Corp. has agreed to pay $490,902 to settle U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charges of accounting irregularities. The SEC launched its investigation in 2002.

Microsoft Corp.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Microsoft Corp. is extending the deadline from Jan. 31 to June 30, 2008, for manufacturers and retailers to halt sales of PCs running Windows XP. The third parties had sought the extension because sales of the new Windows Vista operating system...

U.S. Department of the Treasury.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... The U.S. Department of the Treasury has awarded AT & T Inc. a S270 million deal to build a next-generation voice, data and video network. The network will be part of the government's $20 billion Networx Universal program.

3Com Corp.(Short Takes)
October 1, 2007... Network equipment vendor 3Com Corp. has agreed to be acquired by Bain Capital LLC and Huawei Technologies Co. for $2.2 billion. Huawei had been a partner with 3Com in a joint venture until late last year.

Intel cuts IT staff to boost efficiency.(CAREERS)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... INTEL CORP. IS CUTTING its IT staff by as much as 10% as part of an effort to make its internal operations more efficient. "We're in a very competitive environment and need to stay agile and efficient," said Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. He...

Microsoft begins buildup to Longhorn's release.(OPERATING SYSTEMS)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... THE LONG MARCH to the release of Windows Server 2008, a.k.a. Longhorn Server, continued last week, as Microsoft Corp. made the first "release candidate" version available for downloading from its Web site. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Between the lines.(News Digest)(Cartoon)
October 1, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Microsoft Corp.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)
October 1, 2007... Microsoft Corp. released a beta version of its Service Pack 1 update for Windows Vista to an invitation-only group of about 12,000 users. That fulfilled a promise by the vendor that the initial SP1 beta would be out before the end of September....

SAP AG.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... SAP AG said that the federal judge who is overseeing Oracle Corp.'s intellectual property theft lawsuit against SAP has set a trial date of Feb. 9, 2009.

30 years ago.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)
October 1, 2007... Computerworld published a story with the headline, "'Ease of Use' Has Become Latest DP Buzzword."

China jails writers of Panda worm.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... XIANTAO, CHINA -- A 25-year-old Chinese programmer who wrote and unleashed the Panda worm in China almost a year ago has been sentenced to four years in prison, according to the German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Li Jun was...

Cisco signs pact with Chinese firm.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... QINGDAO, CHINA -- Cisco Systems Inc., looking to boost its consumer business, has signed an agreement with Haier Co., based here, to jointly develop business processes and home networking systems. Under the agreement, Haier, a manufacturer...

Briefly noted.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... India's PC market grew by more than 22% in the quarter that ended June 30, as overall sales reached 1.53 million units. Hewlett-Packard Co. led the market with 22.2% of all sales, according to IDC (India) Ltd. Runners-up HCL Infosystems Ltd....

Advocates overcoming IT resistance to Web 2.0: grass-roots efforts show that security, compliance issues can be resolved.(WEB 2.0)
October 1, 2007... WEB 2.0 TOOLS are slowly making their way to corporate users, often under the wings of champions who must work to overcome IT resistance to blogs, wikis, online communities and the like. For example, Adam Carson said that Morgan Stanley's...

Desperately seeking virtualization skills: IT execs say the rapid growth of virtual systems is making it hard to find workers who have experience with the technology.(CAREERS)
October 1, 2007... AS MORE organizations adopt server virtualization software, they're also looking to hire people who have worked with the technology in live applications. But such workers can be hard to find, as Joel Sweatte, IT manager at East Carolina...

Keep tabs on your Web rep.(On the Mark)(Salience Engine from Lexalytics Inc.)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... SOCIAL NETWORKS, blogs and other online forums can make or break a reputation these days, be it a company's or a product's. But the sheer volume of verbiage being posted is all but impossible to track. Unless, of course, you've got a tireless...

Get a Palette of automation options.(On the Mark)(Data Palette 4.0)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Automating best practices in a data center is difficult, says Thor Culver-house. The toughest nuts to crack for an autonomic specialist? Databases, says the CEO of Stratavia Corp. in Denver. That's true in part because the nuances of various...

Give your fleet drivers instant skills feedback.(On the Mark)(SGreen-Road Technologies Inc.'s Safety Center)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that fleet drivers are twice as likely to have an accident as the average person behind the wheel (see "Watch Your Driving Because... ," On the Mark, May 21). Since most...

Charles M. Herzfeld: the 'godfather' of ARPA talks about the days of funding crazy ideas like computer networks, today's lack of effective leadership in government research and the price we may pay.(THE GRILL)(Interview)
October 1, 2007... Charles M. Herzfeld is currently a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va. He was hired by the Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as ARPA, in 1961 to head up research in ballistic missile...

Linux still doesn't make it on desktop.(OPINION)(Editorial)
October 1, 2007... BACK IN the mid-'90s, my research focused on desktop operating systems. There was a plethora of options for IT organizations, with Mac OS, Windows in the guise of NT and 95, and OS/2 Warp all vying for the attention of IT managers. Even Unix...

Happy birthday, Sputnik! The little satellite hugely embarrassed us 50 years ago and led to a U.S. technological rebound that changed the world. But are we risking another humiliation?
October 1, 2007... THE MOST influential piece of hardware from the early days of computing may not have been the IBM 360 mainframe or the DEC PDP-1 minicomputer; or the earlier Binac, ENIAC or Univac computers; or the Babbage Difference Engine from the 1800s. ...

Step away from the keyboard (and other productivity TIPS): how to do more work in less time and get your life back.(Q & A)(Tony Schwartz of the Energy Project)(Interview)
October 1, 2007... When you need to get more done, working longer is counterproductive. That's the message from Tony Schwartz in this month's Harvard Business Review. Schwartz is the president and founder of the Energy Project in New York and a co-author of The...

Great career advice I ignored: the road to success isn't always on the map.(CAREERS)
October 1, 2007... CLIMB THE CORPORATE LADDER. Keep your eye on the ball. Pay your dues. A lot of the conventional wisdom about how to succeed in your career is sound, and the oft-recommended linear path upward frequently works well enough. Many successful...

Online social networks: these sites can facilitate connections in your industry or around the world.(QUICKSTUDY)
October 1, 2007... SOCIAL NETWORKS (most often hosted on Web sites) allow people to communicate with others whom they may or may not know. They include dating sites, professional sites, chat rooms, community sites and bulletin boards, but not venues whose primary...

Did someone say 'extra money'? When your CIO invites you to come up with a wish list, some restraint is advisable.(SECURITY MANAGER'S JOURNAL)
October 1, 2007... HOW OFTEN do you hear, "We have some extra money to spend, so tell me what you'd like to purchase"? Those words are certainly rare in my company, so when my CIO asked his direct reports to draft wish lists, I was quick to spin up Microsoft...

So you want to be a manager.(OPINION)
October 1, 2007... AS FALL begins, my thoughts often turn to the future. One of the common questions for IT professionals thinking about the future is whether to pursue a career in management. It's a good time to think about this if you've been purely...

The worst answer to give in a job interview.(Career Watch)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... When the interviewer asks, "Do you have any questions?" the worst answer you could possibly give is, "No." That makes you look unprepared, uninterested and uneducated, according to the Career Hub blog (http://careerhub.typepad.com). So,...

The graying workforce.(Career Watch)(Table)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Not surprisingly, these U.S. Census Bureau projections show older people making up an ever-larger percentage of the workforce in the decades to come. What is surprising is that they show the 4-and-under crowd to be a steady presence in the...

Business meets academia: how U.S. colleges and universities are working with the private sector to develop next-generation IT leaders.(Career Watch)(Bentley College in Waltham, Massachusetts)
October 1, 2007... * School: Bentley College, Waltham, Mass. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] * Does it have an IT advisory council? Yes, a formal advisory group of senior IT executives meets with Bentley's faculty on a quarterly basis to review recruiting issues...

Right again!(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Production controller e-mails IT pilot fish with a problem: Controller is trying to enter orders into the manufacturing system, but he keeps getting an error that tells him to "check shop calendar." "I investigate, and the user is correct,"...

Get physical.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... IT pilot fish's boss receives a request from the plant manager: "I want you to create a program that will physically stop workers from loading trailers if there's not a shipment date on the form." Sighs confused fish, "We're not sure if he...

This instant?(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... This company's help desk uses instant messaging to handle support for 55 remote sites. But it's not always smooth. User: "Can you put these two printers on my computer? I switched departments today." Pilot fish: "I have to jump on your...

Tough one.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Trouble ticket says this printer needs to be fixed; it hasn't been working for three months. "I printed the test page, and it only printed with colors," says fish. "So I told the user to replace the black ink. Problem fixed! But why did it take...

Work-around.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
October 1, 2007... Company acquires a competitor and then begins the process of converting the acquiree's BlackBerry users to the new owner's standard Windows Mobile devices. "One of their road employees said she was having trouble with her older BlackBerry and...

Conventional IT wisdom.(FRANKLY SPEAKING)
October 1, 2007... A FEW THINGS in IT remain true, despite the best efforts of vendor marketers, management gurus, industry analysts and Computerworld pundits to make everyone believe otherwise: The Internet poses security risks. Always has. Always will. ...

Job acquiescence.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
October 8, 2007... YOU'D NEVER guess what came in the mail last week. Believe me. You'd never, ever guess. Unless, of course, you said, "A bronze-tone, life-size plaster sculpture of a man's hand clicking a mouse, mounted and designed to hang on a wall." If you...

Diverse and proud.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 8, 2007... My boss and I had an interesting discussion after reading Don Tennant's Editor's Note in the Sept. 3 issue ["Building Trust"]. We had always considered ourselves special because our IT department had been, until recently, majority female,...

Failing the stress test.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 8, 2007... Virginia Robbins' column "Cooling Down From High Stress" [Opinion, Sept. 10] could have been written for me. I find that high stress is more common than ever. Companies get so focused on priorities, deadlines, rules of the game, etc. that their...

Not so excel-lent.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 8, 2007... The article "Excel 2007 Flunks Some Math Problems" [Computerworld.com, Sept. 26] indicated that the error occurs in a dozen instances. It is much more than a dozen. I divided 65,535 by every whole number from 1 to 65,535 (by copying the...

Microsoft adds license for making Windows XP legal.(SOFTWARE PIRACY)
October 8, 2007... MICROSOFT Corp. amped up its antipiracy campaign last week, adding a software-licensing program aimed at large customers that need to "get legal" after being fingered for using counterfeit or illegally installed copies of Windows XP. ...

Sun plans to merge server, storage units.(DATA CENTER)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... Sun Microsystems Inc. plans to combine its storage and server businesses into a new group called Sun Systems, according to a blog posting last week by CEO and President Jonathan Schwartz. The realignment comes about two years after the...

Target.com case may expand disability laws on the Web.(INTERNET)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... A FEDERAL JUDGE last week ruled that Target.com, the home page of retailer Target Corp., must be accessible to blind persons under California laws. The ruling could extend state and federal disabilities statutes to the Internet, experts said....

Sun Microsystems Inc.(Short Takes)(Sun releases software patches)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... Sun Microsystems Inc. has patched 11 vulnerabilities in the Windows, Linux and Solaris versions of its Java Runtime Environment and Java Web Start. Copenhagen-based security vendor Secunia APS rated all the patches "highly critical," its...

Salesforce.com Inc.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... Salesforce.com Inc. has created a $25 million investment fund to encourage start-up companies to build applications on its Force.com hosted development platform. Investment companies Bay Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners contributed to the...

ERG Ventures LLC.(Short Takes)(company agrees to pay fines)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... ERG Ventures LLC has agreed to pay $330,000 in fines to settle a Federal Trade Commission complaint that it hid spyware in software that could be downloaded for free. The software infected 15 million computers, the FTC said.

Microsoft Corp.(Short Takes)(company acquires Jellyfish.com)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... Microsoft Corp., looking to augment its e-commerce and search capabilities, has acquired Jellyfish.com, a comparison-shopping Web site. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed.

McBride: reports of SCO's death greatly exaggerated.(OPERATING SYSTEMS)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... IF THE CORPORATE Grim Reaper is truly knocking on the door of The SCO Group Inc., no one seems to have told Darl McBride, the software vendor's president and CEO. Since early August, SCO has lost a key court ruling in its lawsuit against...

Microsoft sets its SaaS sights on larger users.(SOFTWARE)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... CONVENTIONAL WISDOM holds that small companies, not big ones, are embracing software-as-a-service technologies. And until now, Microsoft Corp.'s forays into the SaaS arena via its Live services have reinforced that view by focusing on home...

Live services.(NOW SERVING)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... * Are designed for home users, business end users and virtual work groups. * Include pieces of Windows and Office and a hosted version of Dynamics CRM.

Online services.(NOW SERVING)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... * Are aimed at organizations with higher-level IT needs, such as scalability, security and high availability. * Include hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint and the upcoming Office Communications Server 2007.

Between the lines.(News Digest)(Cartoon)
October 8, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(store discontinues service number )(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said it has stopped publishing a toll-free customer service number on its Web site for online shoppers to use. Instead, it expects them to rely on an upgraded version of an online self-help tool.

The National Retail Federation.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(group seeks to stop storing payment card data)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... The National Retail Federation asked credit card companies to stop forcing retailers to store payment card data, a request made one day after the Oct. 1 deadline for complying with the PCI security standard.

25 years ago.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)
October 8, 2007... A story that ran in Computerworld was headlined, "Few Women, Minorities Study DP."

Nokia Siemens to outsource R & D work to IBM.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... ESPOO, FINLAND -- Nokia Siemens Networks BV has announced plans to outsource some of its research and development operations to IBM. Up to 235 employees of the joint venture of Nokia Corp. and Siemens AG will start working for IBM upon...

EC launches probe of Qualcomm.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... BRUSSELS -- The European Commission last week said it has launched an antitrust investigation to determine whether Qualcomm Inc. abused its dominant position in the market for mobile phone chip sets. The commission didn't set a timetable for...

Briefly noted.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... BT Group PLC in London has acquired IT services firm Lynx Technology Ltd. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. Chesterfield, England-based Lynx employs 500 people, including 200 field engineers and 50 consultants. Computerworld UK

ITIL gets the hard sell-by IT execs: managers say workers need to be convinced of the IT blueprint's benefits.(DATA CENTERS)(IT Infrastructure Library)
October 8, 2007... LIKE MANY large companies, Yahoo Inc. is adopting new IT service management processes detailed as part of the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) guidelines. One of its goals is reducing the need for IT staffers to repeatedly fix the same system...

Corporate BI projects face skeptical users: IT managers must also prove to execs that the technology offers strong ROI.(BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE)(return on investment)
October 8, 2007... LAS VEGAS WHILE THE notion of "democratizing" business intelligence has been bandied about for years, only recently have many IT operations moved to include end users in BI plans. Users attending Computerworld's BI Perspectives...

Put the Internet in a box.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... DEPLOYING IP-BASED applications across the Internet is simple. Testing how well they'll perform is a bit trickier. After all, how do you mimic the Internet? [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Turns out it's not so difficult for the folks at Anue...

Crank up any IP app.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... Akamai Technologies Inc. is well known for boosting the performance of browser-based applications. This week, the Cambridge, Mass.-based company is rolling out its IP Application Acceleration service for apps that use more Internet protocols...

To PDF or not to PDF?(On the Mark)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... Where do you stand on PDFs? Some companies love Adobe Systems Inc.'s immensely popular document format, says Brent Gaynor, vice president of marketing at Docudesk Corp. in Plano, Texas. But others are less than enamored of it, preferring, say,...

Esme Vos: the founder of MuniWireless.com talks about how things go wrong in muni Wi-Fi, why the EU does it better and who should bear the risk for liberating a city.(THE GRILL)(Interview)
October 8, 2007... Esme Vos, founder of MuniWireless.com, is a lawyer by training who started blogging about municipal wireless in 2003. The blog became MuniWireless.com, a worldwide aggregator of information about the industry. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Application-less thinking.(OPINION)(Column)
October 8, 2007... WE DON'T spend a lot of time in IT thinking about a world without applications, but it's time we started. At first blush, the idea seems reasonable enough. It's easy, for instance, to draw a picture on a whiteboard of a network cloud...

Storage on trial: if your company is faced with a lawsuit, you could bear the burden of retrieving documents quickly. Here's how to be the hero.(SPOTLIGHT: STORAGE)
October 8, 2007... WHAT IS A data-retrieval plan worth to a company caught up in litigation? For Morgan Stanley, $15 million. In 2006, the Wall Street firm agreed to pay that sum in fines to resolve an investigation by U.S. regulators into its failure to...

From backroom to courtroom: storage administrators gain status as they team up to meet the new rules of e-discovery.(SPOTLIGHT: STORAGE)
October 8, 2007... IN THE NINE MONTHS since Ed Rolison became a storage analyst at a leading global bank in England, he hasn't exactly become the most recognizable person in the office. Rolison, a contractor from IT services provider Getronics NV, rarely talks...

How the rules have changed: the high cost of retrieving data is no longer an excuse in a civil procedure. Here are the other changes you need to know about.(SPOTLIGHT: STORAGE)(Federal Rules of Civil Procedure )
October 8, 2007... IF YOU'RE an IT professional who's also interested in legal affairs, there has never been a better time to blend the two worlds. With the amendments in December 2006 to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), IT has become inextricable...

The big backup squeeze: a survey says backup duties are a time sink, yet fast access to stored data is crucial. Is disk-to-disk the answer?(SPOTLIGHT: STORAGE)
October 8, 2007... FED UP with slow tape backup systems and under pressure by regulators and auditors to keep data online and readily available, large and midsize businesses are making disk-to-disk backup technology a top priority in their data centers this year....

History revisited.(OPINION)(data storage)(Column)
October 8, 2007... THOSE OF a certain age will remember when John Poindexter and Ollie North thought they were being extremely clever by electronically shredding nearly 6,000 e-mail messages in November of 1986. They had hoped to mask their involvement in the...

Eileen Trauth: the interim associate dean for diversity, outreach and international engagement at Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology discusses women's under-representation in the IT workforce.(Q & A)(Interview)
October 8, 2007... Why is it important to pull women into the IT workforce? There are two reasons. One is social inclusion. The societal barriers that women experience should be addressed for the same reason that we address barriers to race or disability. The...

There's always a reason.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(life span of omputer batteries)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... The batteries die in this pilot fish's cordless keyboard, so he orders a new set, installs them and gets back to work. A month later, the batteries die in his cordless mouse, so he repeats the process--and this time, the new batteries spark a...

So long.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(a consultant's farewell note)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... Over the course of a big project, this company has seen a whole string of consultants come and go. "One consultant that had been with us for a number of years sent an e-mail to the entire company on his last day," says a pilot fish in the loop....

Losing and damaging IT the navy way.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... Milspec pilot fish reports that the mandatory Web browser home page for the managed computers at his site carries this notice: "Did you know: If you lose or damage NMCI equipment, there are established policies and procedures you must follow."...

That's probably best.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
October 8, 2007... Pilot fish is in the repair room, working on a computer, when the boss sticks his head in the door. "He asked what I was doing, and I told him that the network card was bad and I was replacing it," says fish. "He started to rant and rave, going...

Disposable PCs.(FRANKLY SPEAKING)(Viewpoint essay)
October 8, 2007... I GIVE UP. You should too. It's time to stop trying to secure users' Web browsers, and instead just throw them away. We can't stop users from clicking on the wrong links or going to compromised Web sites. We can't eliminate drive-by worm...

Under the covers.(EDITOR'S NOTE)(removal of reader's comment)
October 15, 2007... THERE WAS an intriguing article posted on our Web site last week about unusual locations for data centers, including buildings that formerly were places of worship. Titled "Data Centers Get Religion," the story by Barbara Darrow cited the...

UML shifts specs to user's point of view.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
October 15, 2007... In his Sept. 24 column, "Five Diagrams Beat a Victorian Novel," Michael Hugos makes a compelling case for representing system specifications in some fashion other than simple text, which he claims simply "mire[s] readers in a swamp of boring...