Computerworld articles from September 2007

Computerworld archives from September 2007

Building trust.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
September 3, 2007... I HAVE A daughter who's married and has two children. Her husband is of African descent. So I suppose if Barak Obama, whose mother is white, can be considered African-American, my grandkids can, too. The kids--Dhimani and Yasmine--are 8 and...

Is it paranoia if they are out to get you?(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 3, 2007... I'm baffled. Don Tennant's Editor's Note of Aug. 6 ["Identity Card Paranoia"] describes the overreaction by some U.S. citizens to the idea of a national identification card. Tennant thinks "we'd all be a lot better off" if we all had ID cards....

Microsoft blames WGA meltdown on human error.(OPERATING SYSTEMS)
September 3, 2007... MICROSOFT Corp. last week blamed "human error" on the part of its IT staff for a server problem that caused the company's Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) validation service to incorrectly tag legitimate users of Windows XP and Windows Vista as...

Vista SP1 set for release in early 2008, Microsoft says.(WINDOWS)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... MICROSOFT CORP. last week confirmed plans to ship the first service pack update for Windows Vista in the first quarter of 2008. The third and final service pack for its predecessor, Windows XP, will ship during the first half of next year....

Intel tries to tighten PC security with second take on vPro.(HARDWARE)
September 3, 2007... INTEL CORP. last week released an upgrade to its vPro bundle of automated PC management technologies, saying the new package provides tighter data security for desktop systems than the original version that was launched last year did. ...

SAP AG.(Short Takes)(company asks court to begin settlement talks)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... SAP AG has asked a federal judge to order settlement talks in its legal battle with Oracle Corp. SAP argued that Oracle exaggerated claims that workers in an SAP unit hacked into an Oracle database. Oracle opposes the settlement talks.

InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards.(Short Takes)(INCITS to vote on making Microsoft document format an international standard)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... The InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards, the U.S. representative to the ISO standards body, was set yesterday to vote to support Microsoft Corp.'s effort to make its Office Open XML document format an international...

Microsoft.(Short Takes)(Microsoft delays release of Windows Server 2008)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Microsoft has delayed the release date of Windows Server 2008, formerly known as Longhorn. The software is now set to ship during the first quarter of 2008 rather than by the end of this year.

Dell Inc.(Short Takes)(company profits up)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Dell Inc. reported that profits for its second fiscal quarter rose 46% to $733 million on sales of $14.8 billion. The rate of increase may change when it completes work on restating earnings.

Indiana court dismisses class-action breach suit.(LEGAL ISSUES)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... A FEDERAL appeals court in Indiana late last month dismissed a class-action lawsuit seeking undisclosed damages related to a corporate data breach at an Evansville, Ind.-based financial services firm. The ruling is the latest in a series of...

City CIO keeps outsourcer on contracting hot seat.(OUTSOURCING)(Steve Reneker)
September 3, 2007... Affiliated Computer Services Inc. last week announced an outsourcing contract extension with the municipal government of Riverside, Calif., that could be worth up to $17 million over three years. But in four months, Riverside CIO Steve Reneker...

Between the lines.(NEWS DIGEST)(Cartoon)
September 3, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The International Air Transport Association.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(group to adopt electronic ticketing )(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... The International Air Transport Association, which includes more than 240 airlines worldwide, said it placed its last order for paper tickets as it moves forward with a plan to fully convert to electronic ticketing by next June.

Acer Inc.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(company plans to acquire Gateway Inc.)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Acer Inc. announced plans to buy Gateway Inc. for $710 million in cash. The acquisition would push Taiwan-based Acer past Lenovo Group Ltd. in shipments, making it the third-largest PC vendor.

Two years ago.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(effects of hurricane Katrina )(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... TWO YEARS AGO: Hurricane Katrina battered sections of the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,600 people and causing widespread disruptions to IT operations and other services.

China probing hack of German PCs.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... BEIJING -- Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao last week described reports of Chinese hackers breaking into German computers as a matter of "grave concern" and said his country will work with Germany to resolve the matter. At a press conference...

Yahoo seeks dismissal of torture lawsuit.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... HONG KONG -- Yahoo Inc. last week asked a California federal court to dismiss a lawsuit brought against the company by jailed Chinese dissidents. The lawsuit, filed in April, alleges that Yahoo and its Yahoo Hong Kong Ltd. subsidiary...

Briefly noted.(Global Dispatches)(Deutsche Telekom AG in talks with Apple Inc. over iPhone)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... A senior executive at Deutsche Telekom AG last week confirmed that the Bonn telecommunications firm is in talks with Apple Inc. regarding selling the iPhone mobile device in Germany. John Blau, IDG News Service

IT opens data warehouses to external users: aims to streamline supply chains, boost customer service.(BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE)
September 3, 2007... CORPORATE Express US Inc. this fall hopes to enable 1,000 of its largest customers to run reports and analyze purchasing patterns using information stored in its internal data warehouse. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The office supply company...

Philly prepares to open faucet on new system--after opening its wallet: efforts to replace mainframe water billing app have cost almost $47M over 20 years, report says.(PROJECT MANAGEMENT)
September 3, 2007... A MUNICIPAL WATER billing system project in Philadelphia that was revived and significantly revamped last January is now ahead of schedule and should be completed by the start of 2008, the city's CIO says. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] But...

How green was my refresh.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... WHERE ARE YOU in the hardware refresh cycle? Are you tossing old gear and bringing in cool new PCs, laptops, servers and other spiffy hardware? Or perhaps you'll be doing it next year. It's probably one or the other, since swapping out hardware...

The charitable choice.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Another option for disposal is to donate old machines to charity. Lots of local organizations retool used equipment and pass it along to the poor, but be sure to work with one that pledges to do a thorough data deletion. Jeff Robinson, laptop...

A burning bush online.(On the Mark)(FaithStreams Network)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... The Internet has cut out the middleman by connecting consumers directly to even the largest companies. And it's doing the same for religion. Tom Nickell, CEO of Light works New Media Inc. in Lexington, Ky., advises church leaders "to get very...

Peter J. Williamson: author Peter J. Williamson talks about China's novel approach to business, its innovative take on innovation and its 'Wild East' cowboys.(THE GRILL)(Interview)
September 3, 2007... In Dragons at Your Door: How Chinese Cost Innovation Is Disrupting Global Competition (Harvard Business School Press, 2007), Peter J. Williamson and Ming Zeng describe how Chinese companies have cornered global markets by creatively managing...

Moving beyond process design.(OPINION)(Viewpoint essay)
September 3, 2007... FOR A GOOD DECADE NOW, most IT organizations have been strongly focused on business process design. With businesses investing big bucks in ERP, supply chain management and customer relationship management systems, process design has been king,...

FAQ about going green: thinking about making changes to your data center? Read this first.(SPOTLIGHT: DATA CENTERS)(Interview)
September 3, 2007... GREEN COMPUTING is a hot-button issue right now, but not all the ideas out there are practical for data centers. "It's 90% hype," says Ben Stewart, senior vice president of facilities planning at Terremark Worldwide Inc. He's dubious about...

Green grows the data center: what's next for this 100% solar-powered data center? A dirt roof that will cut air conditioning costs by 50%.(SPOTLIGHT: DATA CENTERS)
September 3, 2007... "WE BELIEVE all life is precious and deserving of our respect, kindness and care," says Endangered Species Chocolate on its Web site. It boast that it buys its cocoa from "small family-owned properties" in Nigeria, where it is grown "in the...

Low-cost locations: the high price of power is driving some companies to look for cheaper data center locales.
September 3, 2007... INDUSTRY GIANTS such as Ask.com, Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. have good reason to build data centers near inexpensive hydroelectric power sources. Their growth depends on serving tens of millions of customers, which requires massive data...

Can you hear me now? Consolidation and denser equipment make for noisier data centers. Here's how to quiet things down.(SPOTLIGHT: DATA CENTERS)
September 3, 2007... THE MORE SERVERS that are added to a data center, the more cooling that center is likely to need. And the more cooling those servers require, the greater the "whoosh" generated. Whoosh, for the uninitiated, is the annoying noise of fans and...

LEED certification: the LEED rating system encourages energy conservation.(QUICKSTUDY: DATA CENTERS)
September 3, 2007... FOR MANY YEARS, the environmental movement has urged the development of buildings that are not only more energy efficient, but also use recycled materials, conserve water, have a reduced impact on the local environment and provide a healthy...

Green in and out.(OPINION: DATA CENTERS)(Viewpoint essay)
September 3, 2007... THERE ARE two kinds of people: optimists and pessimists. Sadly, I'm one of the latter. So I wasn't surprised when the vast majority of scientists concluded that human contributions to the buildup of greenhouse gases are a key component of...

Business meets academia.(Career Watch)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... HOW U.S. COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES ARE WORKING WITH THE PRIVATE SECTOR TO DEVELOP NEXT-GENERATION IT LEADERS [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SCHOOL: Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh DOES IT HAVE AN IT...

Chris Stephenson: the executive director of the computer science teachers association discusses hooking students on IT careers early.(Q & A)(Interview)
September 3, 2007... You say high school is the best time to grab students' interest in IT careers. How should the K-12 curriculum change to do that? Students and their parents have many misconceptions about the field, and it is essential that we let them know that...

Earn a Ph.D. in PM.(Career Watch)(project management)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Online school Capella University has added project management specializations to both its Ph.D. in organization and management and its Ph.D. in information technology degree programs. According to the Project Management Institute, that brings...

Think it'll help?(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Company president tasks pilot fish with creating a database for tracking sales leads. "He said, 'We're losing all this data because it's not in a central location,'" says fish, who whips up the form-driven application posthaste. But when an...

Kinder, gentler IT.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Pilot fish passes along an internal program change notice: "Change Notice 12345 discussed a number of changes to the 'My Favorites' setup. One of those changes was a new field called 'Explode upon launching.' We have renamed that to 'Auto...

That's one way of putting it.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Net admin pilot fish gets a call from a user who complains that her floppy drive won't read her diskette. Fish grabs a replacement drive, heads to user's office and swaps out the hardware, then asks for the diskette so he can test the new...

Seems clear enough.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... Supervisor calls help desk to report that she can't find the new document she was working on before she left for a meeting. What did you do to the document before the meeting? pilot fish asks. "I closed it and exited the program," supervisor...

Nice, but unlikely.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
September 3, 2007... User complains that she isn't able to forward mail from her work account to her personal e-mail account and wants e-mail admin pilot fish to fix the problem. Fortunately, she does forward the non-delivered-mail error message: "Your message did...

Rewiring respect.(FRANKLY SPEAKING)(IT professionals)
September 3, 2007... WHY DON'T IT people get more respect? On this Labor Day, things are actually looking better for people who work in corporate IT. Budgets aren't quite so tight. Companies are hiring. Interesting IT projects are getting a green light. But when it...

Sacrifice.(EDITOR'S NOTE)
September 10, 2007... I'VE OFTEN said that what I love most about my job is the opportunity to associate with IT professionals. Steadfast perseverance and boundless optimism--characteristics I hold dear--exist in many other pursuits, I know. It's just that in my own...

Wary of malware? Just disconnect.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 10, 2007... One thing I've noticed in reading various lists of malware prevention tips is that nobody ever mentions disconnecting your computer from the Web as a good solution ["How Do I Tell if My Computer Is a Zombie?" Computerworld.com, July 24]. Even...

Goodbye, Windows.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 10, 2007... Scot Finnie wrote a very well-reasoned article that covered a number of interesting points ["Ding! Mac vs. PC Cost Analysis, Round II," Computerworld.com, Aug. 9]. One is the stranglehold Microsoft has on computer users with its Office suite....

NYC taxis will get far more than GPS.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 10, 2007... Just to clarify, here's what's included in the technology upgrade that may lead some New York taxi drivers to strike: credit/debit card acceptance tools, passenger monitors, interactive electronic maps, electronic trip sheets (no more crucial...

Fan of a single button.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
September 10, 2007... Ken Mingis, in his recent article about the new iMacs ["Hands On: New iMacs' Form, Function a 'Fabulous Combo,'" Computerworld.com, Aug. 15] made a disparaging remark about Apple's one-button mouse. I imagine that, as a techie, he would prefer...

Microsoft falls short on open XML standard bid.(SOFTWARE)(Extensible Markup Language)
September 10, 2007... MICROSOFT Corp. failed in its attempt to win fast-track ISO standard status for its Office Open XML document format, getting a majority of the votes that were cast but not enough to meet the requirements for approval. The Open XML proposal...

IT manager convicted of hacking ex-employer.(SECURITY)(Jon Paul Oson )(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... A FORMER technical services manager at the Council of Community Clinics in San Diego faces up to 10 years in prison after being convicted in federal court of hacking into the nonprofit organization's computers and sabotaging patient data. ...

Pfizer breach exposes data on 34,000 people.(PRIVACY)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... PFIZER INC. last week confirmed that the personal data of as many as 34,000 people may have been illegally accessed and downloaded from a company computer system by a former employee. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The compromised information...

Network Appliance Inc.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... Network Appliance Inc. has filed a lawsuit charging that Sun Microsystems Inc.'s ZFS file system technology infringes on seven NetApp patents pertaining to data processing systems and related software. Sun denied the charges.

Gateway Inc.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... Gateway Inc. has agreed to sell its professional business unit to MPC Corp. for $90 million. Plans to sell the unit, which targets midsize organizations, were disclosed when Acer Inc. agreed to buy Gateway for $710 million.

U.S. Department of Justice.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... The U.S. Department of Justice has asked the Federal Communications Commission not to impose Net neutrality regulations on broadband providers. The DOJ said such rules could "inefficiently skew investment, delay innovation and diminish consumer...

Cognos Inc.(Short Takes)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... Cognos Inc., a maker of business intelligence software, has agreed to purchase Applix Inc., a developer of performance analysis tools, for $339 million in cash.

EBay auction yields drive holding political data.(NEWS DIGEST)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... BILL RIES-KNIGHT turned to eBay Inc.'s auction site to buy what he thought was a brand-new PC hard drive. When it arrived at his home, however, the Stockton, Calif., resident found a used drive that contained proprietary data of the...

Apple stirs hornet's nest with iPhone price cut.(MOBILE DEVICES)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... IT MANAGERS might find more end users carrying iPhones and asking that they be supported, now that Apple Inc. has unexpectedly slashed the price of the 8GB model of its two-month-old mobile device by 33%. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] But...

Between the lines.(NEWS DIGEST)(Cartoon)
September 10, 2007... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Palm Inc.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... Palm Inc., which last month said it was on track to ship its Foleo lightweight PC this summer, instead pulled the plug on the Linux-based system. The Foleo was supposed to work with Palm's Treo smart phone.

Intel Corp.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... Intel Corp. released six Xeon 7300 chips, its first quad-core devices designed for servers that have multiple processor slots and run high-end workloads such as virtual systems, databases and ERP applications.

Two years ago.(BENCHMARKS LAST WEEK)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... TWO YEARS AGO: Google Inc. hired Internet pioneer Vinton Cerf as its "chief Internet evangelist."

Bank of India site hit by hackers.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... MUMBAI, INDIA -- The Web site of Bank of India was back online early last Tuesday, four days after hackers forced the financial services firm to shut the site down. Researchers at Sunbelt Software Inc., a Clearwater, Fla.-based maker of...

Australia tightens Immigration laws.(Global Dispatches)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... BELCONNEN, AUSTRALIA -- The Australian government last week unveiled major changes to its General Skilled Migration program that will make it more difficult for companies to bring skilled foreign workers, including IT staffers, into the...

Briefly noted.(Global Dispatches)(Oracle Corp. to acquire Netsure Telecom Ltd.)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... Oracle Corp. has agreed to acquire Netsure Telecom Ltd., a Dublin-based provider of network intelligence and network data integrity software. Terms of the agreement, expected to close later this month, were not disclosed. Dan Nystedt, IDG...

Update won't stop IT execs from closing door on Vista: Microsoft plans to release SP1 early next year, but some users say they'll stick with Windows XP for now.(OPERATING SYSTEMS)
September 10, 2007... MICROSOFT CORP. says it has sold 42 million volume licenses of Windows since it released Windows Vista to enterprise customers last November. But the company claims to have no statistics on how many of the corporate users who are eligible to...

States move toward the center on IT--finally: West Virginia, Michigan and others are following the private sector's lead and consolidating their servers and data centers.(DATA CENTERS)
September 10, 2007... WEST VIRGINIA is part of a wave of states that are embracing data center and server consolidation in their government IT operations. It's replacing 85 e-mail servers that run a half-dozen different applications with four Exchange-based...

Cash dethroned as king.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... THE MONEY in your bank account is as valuable as ever, but the greenbacks in your wallet will rapidly become a thing of the past. That's the conclusion of Foster City, Calif.-based Visa U.S.A. Inc., after checking in with 1,000 baby boomers and...

Virtualize your I/O.(On the Mark)(Input/Output)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... Your storage-area network (SAN) virtualization work is most likely done, and server virtualization is well under way. But don't stop there, says Ashok Krishnamurthi, CEO of Xsigo Systems Inc. in Sunnyvale, Calif. With new technology from his...

Get smart graphics.(On the Mark)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... SmartDraw 2008 debuts this week. The upgrade, from SmartDraw.com in San Diego, sports an Office 2007 look and feel and packs in thousands of new templates for all sorts of business activities--so simple, even a pointy-haired boss, a la...

Robert Erhardt: the San Diego Zoo's CTO talks about saving species from extinction, developing a worldwide medical database for animals and tracking condors with RFID.(THE GRILL)(Interview)
September 10, 2007... Robert Erhardt is chief technology officer for the Zoological Society of San Diego, which operates the San Diego Zoo, its Wild Animal Park, the Beckman Center for Conservation Research and the Foundation for the Zoological Society. Prior to...

Cooling down from high stress.(OPINION)(Column)
September 10, 2007... EACH YEAR, there are just six days--three in late spring and three in late summer--when I wish we had air conditioning in our 97-year-old house; the rest of the year, the breezes off the bay keep the place under 73 degrees. The tough part of...

Job swapping for fun and profit: when FedEx IT managers spend six months in one another's shoes, everybody benefits.(Cover story)
September 10, 2007... AS MANAGING DIRECTOR of shipment data capture at FedEx, Martha Carr had plenty of challenges and ample professional fulfillment. But she wanted new perspectives, more exposure and bigger opportunities. "I felt like I needed an external U.S....

Everything must stay! The cost of disk storage is so low that the easiest thing for companies to do is to just hold on to all their data. And that opens up radical new possibilities.(FUTURE WATCH)
September 10, 2007... A COMPANY today can buy a terabyte of enterprise-class disk storage for about $5,000. Eight years ago, it would have cost $200,000. Even the dramatic drop in the cost of processing, as predicted by Moore's Law, doesn't happen that fast. ...

Videoconferencing that works. Finally! It's still not cheap, but telepresence technology takes videoconferencing a giant step forward. And did we mention that it's really cool?(NETWORKING)(Telepresence)
September 10, 2007... BACK IN THE 1960s, the old AT & T's Western Electric group demonstrated the Picturephone to a doubting world, and the world has remained doubtful ever since. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] That's because videoconferncing products developed...

Desktop power play; Coming soon: a supercomputer for the rest of us.(HARDWARE)
September 10, 2007... WHAT IF your desktop computer could run 100 times faster than a PC and were simple enough for a high school student to program? That's not an idle question. Researchers at the University of Maryland have built a prototype of a "desktop...

Lies, damn lies and paid polling: the security world according to vendor surveys.(SECURITY)
September 10, 2007... ONE SURVEY describes USB devices as the leading security threat IT managers face. Another talks about zero-day attacks emerging as the biggest driver of security budgets. A third says a majority of consumers polled want their banks to implement...

Road map meeting goes sideways: when the CIO wants to focus on network segmentation, it's probably best to go along. Besides, he's right.(SECURITY MANAGER'S JOURNAL)(Chief information officer)
September 10, 2007... ONE OF my strategic objectives for the year is something I've actually been looking forward to doing: coming up with a comprehensive security road map. When I've done this in the past, it's been kind of fun. I like to get some people in a room,...

Ten energy savers.(OPINION)(Column)
September 10, 2007... COMPANIES IN the U.S. spend as much as 10% of their total IT budgets on power and cooling, according to Gartner Inc. Over the past year, virtually every IT publication has recommended ways to reduce energy consumption by migrating to green...

How to get that raise.(Career Watch)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... Jim Camp, writing in CIO magazine on June 27, offered "10 Mistakes to Avoid When Negotiating a Raise." Be sure to check it out. Highlighted here is what he had to say about mistake No. 1: Don't tell your employer you hope she'll say yes....

Follow the talent.(Career Watch)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... In a June report from Forrester Research Inc. called "Recruiting IT Talent: Adjusting to a Hot Market," analyst Samuel Bright urges CIOs to respond to the tightening IT skills market by broadening their recruiting pool. He also notes that...

Tony Young: having been through three acquisitions, Informatica's CFO talks about the career effects of mergers and acquisitions and keeping an IT staff motivated during M & A upheaval.(Q & A)(Informatica's)(Interview)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... How have these acquisitions affected you professionally? My main concern was how to manage my team. As an IT company, we build road maps out nine to 12 months. When an M & A occurs, how do you revisit that and adjust what's on your plate? These...

Driven to distraction.(Career Watch)(Table)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... What managers say is most distracting: E-mail 67% Crisis of the day 42% Personal interruptions 31% Changing priorities 30% And how they cope: Get to work early 46% Focus 41%...

Picky, picky.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... Support pilot fish gets a call from the purchasing manager, who says he's trying to invoice a purchase order and the ERP program won't let him proceed. "The error message says the invoice is for $12,050, and this doesn't match the line total on...

Clicky, clicky.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... One of this pilot fish's jobs is unblocking Web sites that the filtering software miscategorizes, and when a user asks him to open up a particular URL, the fish does so. "Then I test it to make sure it works," fish says. "But I can't get to it....

That's in furlongs per fortnight.(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... This company rotates managers every 18 months, so sometimes new IT managers come with no IT background--or clue. "In the weekly departmental meeting, one of the server admins began discussing power available to the server room," says a pilot...

Anyone? Anyone?(TRUE TALES OF IT LIFE)(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... Pilot fish is doing a custom software deployment, and he's got strict orders to have some user workstations running before week's end to test the application. "So I install the app and then send an e-mail to the manager to have him test it,"...

Microsoft's delight.(FRANKLY SPEAKING)
September 10, 2007... I DON'T MIND a little cynicism--it's a natural and only mildly toxic byproduct of paying attention. So last week, when Microsoft's Office Open XML file format was rejected as an international standard, I wasn't bothered that Microsoft said it...