Computerworld blogs are a place for IT professionals to share opinions about information technology and related issues. Comments and professional debate are welcome, but ...

read more | Joyce Carpenter's blog

Podcasts

The Computerworld TechCast is a bimonthly podcast for IT professionals that introduces key enterprise technologies and management processes.

Recent Episodes

All Episodes | |

This podcast explores developments in the fast-changing storage market, ranging from portable storage devices to enterprise management technologies.

Recent Episodes

All Episodes | |

This newscast gives a brief rundown of the day's top IT headlines, every weekday morning.

Recent Episodes

• Global News Update: Thursday, August 21, 2008
• Global News Update: Wednesday, August 20, 2008
• Global News Update: Tuesday, August 19, 2008

All Episodes | |

This NPR-style program about information technology was discontinued in early 2007, but archived programs are still available.

Recent Episodes

All Episodes | |

read more

There was a time when Microsoft was an honorable company. It's getting more and more difficult to resolve any such notion with the 2006 version of the software giant.

In its latest bad decision, detailed in the Computerworld story, Vista and Longhorn to get new antipiracy measures, reported by Eric Lai, Microsoft has decided to place a price tag on security.

If validation code, written by Microsoft, decides that your installation of Windows Vista has been pirated, it turns off the Aero interface and a minor performance technology called ReadyBoost. I'm okay with that. But I am absolutely not okay with the third punitive measure: The disabling of Windows Defender, Microsoft's new onboard anti-spyware utility. Other punitive measures according to published reports include the disabling of Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player. After 30 days, unvalidated copies of Vista will move into "reduced functionality mode," which has been likened by insiders to be something like Safe Mode.

Most people using "pirated" software have absolutely no idea that's the case. Opening up their PCs to Trojans, spyware, and identify theft scams in the name of getting them to pay up on their copy of Windows Vista is not only a very bad business decision, it's an appalling example of just how far Microsoft is willing to go to stuff its corporate coffers.

The true irony is that earlier this decade, Bill Gates promised to make Microsoft software, and Windows in particular, much more secure. And now that Microsoft may have achieved that (and the jury is still out on that), the company is already looking to turn a buck on it?

There's something wrong with a company that totes up the worst-ever software security record, then decides to make security a top priority, and then decides to withhold that security from any user that it deems hasn't properly paid -- even when the lack of validation is most often caused by the sellers users bought their computers from or the repair shops they brought their PCs to. Even when Microsoft's validation process is correct, which it probably is most of the time, it's my assessment that the vast majority of the Windows Vista users were victimized by others. And now Microsoft will be making them pay, first by reducing their security, then by reducing the functionality of Vista.

Hello! Is anyone in Redmond actually paying attention to what it's doing? Do they have any self awareness at all? Because I'm beginning to think that a lot of people are going to take a pass on Vista.

Microsoft is drunk on its own Kool-Aid. It has become this era's Gi-normous ACME Corporation, like Standard Oil and AT&T before it. It has completely lost touch with its beginnings. Because there was a time that Microsoft was David to IBM's Goliath. And Microsoft has more than once gulled the giant. But in its giant suit, Microsoft looks pathetic. Other than attempting month in, month out to deliver profits for its Wall Street masters, Microsoft lacks mission, has gotten far away from its roots and lacks any sense of innovation.

If ever Microsoft needed a course correction -- make that a total change of scenery -- it's now.

Related News and Opinion:

read more | Scot Finnie's blog | 58 comments

The Washington Post has a story today that at first brought a smile, and then made me cringe: Pac Man is 25 years old.

The smile -- well, who couldn't crack a smile, remembering the desperate dash to scoop up dots and avoid blue ghosts, while listening to the "wokka wokka wokka" sound effects?

And the cringe? Well, when a favorite video game from my childhood turns a quarter-century old, I start to realize how old I am, and how much time I wasted in my youth!

read more | 10 comments

The Christian Science Monitor recently posted an article about the effects of video games on society. The article, by Gloria Goodale, notes what a lot of IT folks have known for years: Gaming technology drives advances in other IT fields, particularly hardware. Look at Cell, the multicore chip co-developed by Sony, Toshiba, and IBM. Sony needs it for its next-generation gaming console, the PlayStation 3, but IBM plans to use the chip to create a high-performance workstation  capable of 16 teraflops per second. Computerworld and the Washington Post have also examined how 3D technology is very important to the military, which uses it for recruitment, training and battlefield apps.

read more | Ian Lamont's blog | 1 comment

I'm looking forward to next week's Mobile & Wireless World conference in Phoenix. Hmmm, Phoenix in mid-June? Maybe it will help me forget this past New England winter.

It's a great conference to mingle with people on the mobile/wireless front lines and learn firsthand about the issues and problems they're facing.

Last year I found out two main concerns were rogue wireless users and other security concerns.

read more | David Ramel's blog | 3 comments

I have to admit that this little gem popped into my e-mail courtesy of David Pogue, but it's too cool not to share (in case you haven't seen it). I'm talking about a collection on the Flickr Web site of 124 different Apple.com home pages put together by "Kernel Panic." His profile says he's a journalist living in Paris.
So as we head into the first weekend of the new Mac-moving-to-Intel world, pause and take a moment to look back at the good (and not so good) old days of Apple. Clamshell iBook or Power Mac G3 Minitower anyone?

read more | Ken Mingis's blog

DRM - No thanks! In case you haven't noticed, a lot of companies are putting big money into creating a "workable" digital rights management system. It's not just about keeping illegal movies and games off  P2P networks -- DRM could conceivably keep employees from forwarding embarrassing e-mail outside the office. But Don Marti, writing for Linux Journal, says DRM won't work: "In this crazy business of ours, every once in a while, companies go into a frenzy to sell technology that doesn't work to customers who don't want it." Bloggers have picked up the story, including Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing. Robert Mitchell has taken a look at the DRM landscape from another angle, and wonders if lawsuits will hurt companies involved in the DRM movement.

read more | IT Blogwatch's blog

A recent CW article, noted that Computer Associates International Inc. has agreed to buy Niku Corp.  Mergers and acquisitions are a fact of life in the face paced world of IT. Usually, the merger or acquisition is to allow a company to acquire a technology to enhance their own product line. The success of a merger or acquisition is often determined by how well a company manages its post-merger integration.

read more | Douglas Schweitzer's blog

There are new laws in California and elsewhere in the country that are changing the requirements for how companies protect confidential customer data, detect intrusions to the data and collect forensic data on hacks.

In effect the laws require companies to make a reasonable effort to protect customer data from falling into the wrong hands. Click here for a Network World article that discusses the new law and has a link to the actual legislation.

This means that not only do companies need to have effective border security using firewalls, etc., as well as physical security, but also have the means to detect intrusions, collect forensic data on hacks that occur and know what data was compromised.

read more | Alex Scoble's blog

Over the past week or so, I've seen several good posts on the Blackberry related blogs that I watch.

Here's a run down of some tips that you can use on your Blackberry. Most of these are geared toward the IT professional, but users might find use in them as well:

How to view your event log (from BBHub with link to IBBUG)
Shows keystrokes needed to view log of your Blackberry device for troubleshooting and info purposes.

How to change display type of signal strength indicator from number readout to bars and vice versa (from BBHub with with link to IBBUG)

read more | Alex Scoble's blog

Here's something I missed in my prior post on application development for business intelligence:  There's now an open-source move in that direction, called BIRT.  Actuate, apparently the main proponent of the idea, is also offering its own version of BIRT.

That said, it seems as if BIRT is just another BI tool (and not yet a feature-rich one), without addressing any of the real enterprise app dev issues such as workflow or KPI management.

read more | Curt Monash's blog | 1 comment

Patent reform (or "deform," depending on your point of view) is moving ahead in Congress.  The Patent Reform Act of 2005 has been kicking around in draft form for more than a month; I wrote about it here and reconsidered my opinion here.

Now it's been introduced as H.R. 2795, a bill sponsored by Congressman Lamar Smith with support from both Republicans and Democrats.

As attorney Dennis Crouch points out in his patent-oriented blog Patently-O, this version has been tweaked a bit, but it "still has something to offend almost every interest," he says. Key elements include:

read more | Frank Hayes's blog

Computerworld.com's privacy columnist Jay Cline notes that security breaches have hit at least 16 U.S. universities so far this year, potentially exposing the information of more than a half-million people. Cline says it's a result of academia's philosophy of openness, plus the fact that more and more university operations and data are being placed on the Web. But the time is ripe for universities to start implementing better security measures.

[I]f publicized security breaches in academia continue at the current pace, colleges will be pressured to rethink their approach and commitment to the openness of their learning environments. Members of academic communities won't tolerate having their identities at risk.

...Read more

read more | Mitch Betts's blog | 2 comments

This week, Seagate said it would start shipping 2.5-inch hard drives that use the new perpendicular recording technology by the first quarter of next year. Seagate is the latest of a number of vendors that are using the technology to boost the storage capacity on external and portable hard drives. In April, Fujitsu reported that it would be coming out with a 2.5-inch hard disk drive with a capacity of 200GB  in 2007. Not to be outdone, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies Inc. in early April said it was testing sample drives using perpendicular recording that could lead to desktop drives with 1TB of capacity and microdrives of 20GB by 2007.

read more | Marian Prokop's blog