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What the hell?

1) The government is constantly going after the mafia. There was a high-profile arrest just four days ago, the head of the Bidognetti clan of the camorra (the mafia of Naples).

2) In Italy, the government runs the police, but it has no control over the judiciary. Zero. Whether there is a Pirate Bay trial in Italy is completely outside the government's control.

3) The judiciary hasn't said that they want to do such a trial, either. All TFA (and its source) say is that the president of the Italian Music Industry Federation "expects" that the prosecution will seek a trial several months from now. There are no facts, just speculations from the Italian equivalent of the RIAA.

Are you enjoying being a prejudiced jerk?

There's no way an RIA application will be deployed if it doesn't support the browser with a 70%+ installed base.

You mean 66% and dropping like a rock?

Microsoft made their choices. And the market is not happy.

It will probably be just like every other merger of companies that should fit well together... it won't.

Oracle has been buying up a lot of companies recently. The general consensus seems to be that they've had a good merger and acquisition strategy and that they have pulled them all off well.

You're right... they don't own the internet. The U.S. Government doesn't own the internet, nor should they legally have any right to censor or disrupt the operation thereof. A quick search netted this, basically all of the US is owned by the big telecom and cable companies (surprise!) with ~134,855 routers as of the 2006 date in the article. I understand there are only a few massive (fiberoptic?) channels that span the oceans to connect us globally. Even so, considering these are all privately owned companies, what gives the Fed any right to control any of it? I would think that nations of Europe or Asia would have some issues if their internet access died.

Another instance of the United States playing Hall Monitor for the world.

Vivek Kundra does things that look good on a resume, but dont really make sense in his role. His staff of 600 has been mandated to run more opensource software, and while OpenOffice looks good on paper it has created a nightmare for systems integrators who struggle to convert systems that are deployed across the nation on Microsoft products, and have to be hacked to work with the Open Source competitors. Vivek Kundra, CTO of the District of Columbia, says he found two compelling reasons to switch the D.C. government over to Gmail and Google Apps: ... I would say that he is open source friendly. More importantly, he has taken punches and knows to keep going.

"Windows market share as of Dec. 1 is 89.6 percent."

"Meanwhile, Mac OS X posted its largest gain in two years, with 8.9 percent market share at the end of November."

"On the browser side, Internet Explorer's market share dropped below 70 percent to 69.8 percent for the first time in more than a decade. IE slid 1.5 percentage points in November, totaling a 5.8 percent market share loss for 2008, according to Net Applications."

From: http://www.cio.com/article/467916/Microsoft_Market_Share_Slips_Pressure_s_On_for_Windows_and_IE_

"Windows XP SP3, Vista, and Windows Server 2008 aren't vulnerable", Shados That's two out of four not affected ..

'Impact: Execution of arbitrary code via network, User access via network'

"I didn't read how the exploit actually works to see if it can realistically be used to attack Windows Server 2003", Shados

'"limited and targeted" attacks are in progress by hackers exploiting an unpatched vulnerability in the WordPad Text Converter .. If exploited, a hacker could gain the same rights on a PC as a local user and could remotely execute code'

http://www.cio.com/article/470080/Another_Microsoft_Bug_Revealed_on_Huge_Patch_Day http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9123100

A switch plugged into a conference room network port for a few hours isn't going to destroy anything.

Actually, too many switches can very well bring down the network, even if they are only temporarily plugged in. Usually this only happens because the networking department is completely incompetant, but it can also happen when a company is growing faster than the IT department is prepared for, or if management is too tight and unwilling to pay for the proper infrastructure, and compromises end up being made to "make things work" for the users, despite the potential hazards to the network.

This happened to Beth-Israel hospital (http://www.cio.com/article/31701/Halamka_on_Beth_Israel_s_Health_Care_IT_Disaster?page=1) a few years ago, when they were aquiring and partnering with hospitals left and right. One day, the network crashed.

It took about four days to get seven hospitals back on-line.

It ended up being a massive Spanning-Tree loop that nobody saw coming. The root cause of spanning-tree loops? Basically, too many switches. In this case a researcher had dumped a bunch of data from a connection that was 10 hops from the nearest router.

The -exact- same thing can happen if your network is stretched to its limits and some numb-nuts of a user thinks he's smart and adds a switch to a conferance room and starts dumping - or pulling - a lot of data. If the connection from the conferance room is 9 hops from the nearest router, and you add that 10th, you very well may bring down the whole network. Chances are if your network is stretched like that, then management isn't forking out the cash for the nice switches that can detect an STP loop and mitigate it, but even if they do, your conferance room switch won't work once you cause an STP loop anyway, so why mess with it?

Why not, instead of thinking you know shit you don't, you let the guys who do this stuff for a living do their job, eh?

By the way, fixing that in 4 days cost something on the order of $100-200k in equipment, and probably that much or more in manpower, just to fix a problem caused by too many switches. The final overhaul on the IT network (which, granted, was absolutely necessary) was something on the order of $3mil.

So you might want to think twice the next time you think you're being clever and plugging crap into the network that you shouldn't be. You may very well shut down the entire corporate network by doing so.

I used Evans Data survey (you need to pay for it, but its widely popular amongst CIOs:

Dynamic languages are certainly popular. Almost 70 percent of the 1,200 developers surveyed by Evans Data for its most recent Global Development Survey currently use JavaScript, the most popular dynamic language, with fifteen percent more planning to adopt it. PHP is used by just over a third of developers, and Perl has captured about a quarter of developers (though Perl is much more popular in North America, with 36 percent spending at least some of their time using it).

I guess it depends on the methodology, I'm a C++ dev, but even I use javascript occasionally.

The technology does not work. Yet.

Are you serious? He gave multiple links from disparate sources. This is a conspiracy from Microsoft?

1. Not unconditionally, but you can't necessarily assume he's full of shit either.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.

This was big news. Adobe refused to comment on many occasions, other than to say they hadn't yet decided whether they were going to sue.

Also, IE8 is standards-compliant by default. They did that in reponse to the demand for a standards-compliant-by-default IE8. Both beta 1 or beta 2 renders in standards mode by default. This was also big news.

http://www.cio.com/article/22058/Adobe_Speaks_Out_on_Microsoft_PDF_Battle

Here's Adobe's statement. They basically justified disallowing MS to use PDF on the basis that they believed MS would embrace, extend, extinguish it.

And yes, I can honestly believe that making PDF support optional can remove a legal problem, with or without scare quotes.

The figures on this simply don't support that claim. Your anecdotal evidence of two places you worked it meaningless.

If anything I'd say this is because many people consider Perl's time to have passed and no longer see a reason to use it in any significant project.

Funny.. I'd like to see the figures behind your claims that "many people consider Perl's time to have passed".

A quote from CIO.com story entitled "PHP, JavaScript, Ruby, Perl, Python, and Tcl Today: The State of the Scripting Universe" (8/29/08)

"Of all the scripting languages, Perl offers the biggest installed base of applications, of code, of integrated systems, of skilled programmers. It has the lowest defect rate of any open-source software product. It is ported to essentially every hardware architecture and operating systems, from embedded control systems to mainframes. It is optimized for speed, for memory footprint, for programmer productivity. It has readily-accessible libraries for all types of programming tasks: Web application development, systems and network integration and management, end-user application development, middleware programming, REST and service-oriented architecture programming. Perl is ideal for the organization that takes charge of its own IT future."

Other interesting stats and info throughout the story..

full article

Groovy. Check. Lua. Check. Scala. Good suggestion.

Political rhetoric? Sure, it's definitely scripted, the syntax has lots of boundary conditions, and it is well understood in its own domain. But it never actually executes any functionality so I don't think I should include it.

Seriously, those are good suggestions. one more, and I'd have a nice short-and-sweet article with which I could bonk the PTBs on their heads—Esther (who also blogs occasionally)

I'm also disappointed that the article called out two examples of companies that back-tracked on their telecommuting arrangements without discussing any of the success stories--and there are many. I realize this is shameless self-promotion, but last month I wrote an article for CIO.com about a small software company, Chorus, that closed all of its offices in an admittedly rather drastic cost-cutting move, and now everyone at Chorus--everyone--works from home. And you know what, the strategy is working out well for Chorus employees' productivity. The company made some mistakes in rolling out the telecommuting strategy, but overall they approached it sensibly, and it's working.

Let's learn from the success stories and not use the failures to promote an anti-telecommuting agenda.

The case will likely settle out of court for a handsome sum, as one employment attorney says in a CIO.com article on the lawsuit.

Oh please. Everyone knows it's the standard practice to store sensitive data unencrypted, on a single backup tape in your car. See here:

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/26/0115227
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/11/0412230&from=rss
http://cyberinsecure.com/backup-tape-with-private-details-stolen-from-greensboro-gynecology-associates/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/06/07/citigroup_lost_tape/
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=319327
http://www.cio.com/article/16133/
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/060208-lost-backup-tape-prompts-it.htm

Yes, all are different cases (and there are scores more)

As I remarked in the comments to that article, there isn't one right answer to "how to manage and motivate developers" any more than there's only one right way to write an application. People, skills and situations differ; in fact, I worry more about people who'd think that all these things apply every time and in every scenario.

In other words, the article represents only what it says it does: developers' own answers to "what should the boss know about motivating me." Unlike the other articles in that "getting clueful" series (like what the CIO should know about Agile or telecommuting) , which does not require introspection... well, this one requires that someone be aware of what motivates them and the feeling of Being Managed Well. One of my first bosses was smart enough to recognize that if he let me talk long enough about how I couldn't possibly solve this coding problem, I'd eventually explain to him how I could; but I'd never have said at the time, "A good manager will shut up and let me talk." I think people notice such things by their absence than by their presence.

So I don't expect that developers always know the right way to manage them. I think that managers should be aware of how the developers see it (for compassion reasons if nothing else--we all want to believe our opinions matter)... but the boss still does have to make the right decision.

The thing with the cat is just funny. ("Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you later."--Mary Bly)

As I remarked in the comments to that article, there isn't one right answer to "how to manage and motivate developers" any more than there's only one right way to write an application. People, skills and situations differ; in fact, I worry more about people who'd think that all these things apply every time and in every scenario.

In other words, the article represents only what it says it does: developers' own answers to "what should the boss know about motivating me." Unlike the other articles in that "getting clueful" series (like what the CIO should know about Agile or telecommuting) , which does not require introspection... well, this one requires that someone be aware of what motivates them and the feeling of Being Managed Well. One of my first bosses was smart enough to recognize that if he let me talk long enough about how I couldn't possibly solve this coding problem, I'd eventually explain to him how I could; but I'd never have said at the time, "A good manager will shut up and let me talk." I think people notice such things by their absence than by their presence.

So I don't expect that developers always know the right way to manage them. I think that managers should be aware of how the developers see it (for compassion reasons if nothing else--we all want to believe our opinions matter)... but the boss still does have to make the right decision.

The thing with the cat is just funny. ("Dogs come when they're called; cats take a message and get back to you later."--Mary Bly)

You don't think that his Star Trek comment is funny?! There's a sort-of accompanying article about managing developers, based on what developers say motivates them. Not all the opinions agree, obviously. (I wrote that one.)

Exactly. More details here:

• http://shanghaiist.com/2008/05/19/online_implicat.php. (Has translation of actual instructions to websites).
• http://www.cio.com/article/360213/China_Mourning_Suspends_Entertainment_Web_Sites

Again, to emphasize, these instructions went out to internal Chinese sites. Though I imagine they'll begin blocking access to other sites soon too.

Anyone know why CIO is reporting that Java was the cause of the problem, not Flash http://www.cio.com/article/324313/With_Vista_Breached_Linux_Unbeaten_in_Hacking_Contest?

One day soon, the computer industry will realize that, 150 years after Charles Babbage came up with his idea of a general purpose sequential computer, it is time to move on and change to a new computing model. The industry will be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. For over 20 years, researchers in parallel and high-performance computing have tried to come up with an easy way to use threads for parallel programming. They have failed and they have failed miserably. Amazingly, they are still continuing to pursue the multithreading approach. None other than Dan Reed, Director of scalable and multicore computing at Microsoft Research, believes that multithreading over time will become part of the skill set of every professional software developer (source: cio.com). What is wrong with this picture? Threads are a major disaster: They are coarse-grained, they are a pain in the ass to write and hard to debug and maintain. Reinders knows this. He's pushing threads, not because he wants your code to run faster but because Intel's multicore CPUs are useless for non-threaded apps.

Reinders is not an evangelist for nothing. He's more concerned about future-proofing Intel's processors than anything else. You listen to him at your own risk because the industry's current multicore strategy will fail and it will fail miserably.

Threads were never meant to be the basis of a parallel computing model but as a mechanism to execute sequential code concurrently. To find out why multithreading is not part of the future of parallel programming, read Nightmare on Core Street. There is better way to achieve fine-grain, deterministic parallelism without threads.

My coworker wrote a blog entry at CIO.com, Should Microsoft Throw Away Vista? reporting on this issue.

pretty good overview on IE8 here

Another one of those top-10 articles broken up into 7 web pages with 3 paragraphs each and flooded with useless advertisements & buzzwords like SOA on demand, Oracle Fusion Middleware and "Storage Utopias"

look at the state of it ! click next ten times to read another 100 words with 30+ adverts per page ! in fact most of the content on that site is advertising of one sort or another they should look at their own management ethos before criticising others "hey lets set up site that has more adverts on it than a domain squatters" here's the print version because as a CIO i wouldnt waste my time reading a site like that http://www.cio.com/article/print/186800

I know this off-topic, but I find it hard to read anything by the author after the recent comments she posted in response to this article: http://comments.cio.com/node/176250?page=4

Disclaimer: the issue with the posts was the level of professionalism, not necessarily the stances on PHP.

You Used PHP to Write WHAT?!

Despite significant shortcomings, PHP is perhaps the most popular Web scripting language in the world. But despite a large collection of nails, not every tool is a hammer. So when should it be used, and when would another dynamic programming language be a better choice? We identify its strengths and weaknesses.

http://www.cio.com/article/176250

You used JavaScript to write WHAT?

The key to understanding when (and when not) to deploy JavaScript has as much to do with the intent of the target application as it does JavaScript itself. Written by Michael Morrison, author of Head First JavaScript.

http://www.cio.com/article/print/175950

http://www.cio.com/article/print/175450

Hello, please let me signal this two links with experiences I found useful to browse: http://www.cio.com/topic/1401/Succession_Planning and http://www.cio.com/topic/1501/Executive_Relationship

Hello, please let me signal this two links with experiences I found useful to browse: http://www.cio.com/topic/1401/Succession_Planning and http://www.cio.com/topic/1501/Executive_Relationship

In some ways, AJAX is easy. But if you get into a non-trivial programming exercise, such as building an entire site relying on all sorts of data inputs, the typical developer tools don't necessarily help you along. Yes, the options (FOSS and proprietary) are getting better, but there's still a long way to go before it's precisely easy to write a useful quick-and-dirty app the way that, say, you can throw together a desktop database tool today.

While Ajax is clever and useful, it isn't easy and it has limitations. Scott Guthrie, Microsoft general manager, .Net development platform, says, "Ajax itself is built on top of an innocuous HTML feature; the programming model wasn't built to scale for that." JavaScript performance is an issue as applications get bigger and need to be maintained. Plus, he points out, these applications are "weirdly stitched together."

As a result, says Bob Brewin, Sun's software CTO, doing Ajax is really painful, "like building an aircraft carrier by hand." Hand-coded Ajax development today requires a large skill set, so several interesting technologies have materialized to simplify it.

In some ways, AJAX is easy. But if you get into a non-trivial programming exercise, such as building an entire site relying on all sorts of data inputs, the typical developer tools don't necessarily help you along. Yes, the options (FOSS and proprietary) are getting better, but there's still a long way to go before it's precisely easy to write a useful quick-and-dirty app the way that, say, you can throw together a desktop database tool today.

While Ajax is clever and useful, it isn't easy and it has limitations. Scott Guthrie, Microsoft general manager, .Net development platform, says, "Ajax itself is built on top of an innocuous HTML feature; the programming model wasn't built to scale for that." JavaScript performance is an issue as applications get bigger and need to be maintained. Plus, he points out, these applications are "weirdly stitched together."

As a result, says Bob Brewin, Sun's software CTO, doing Ajax is really painful, "like building an aircraft carrier by hand." Hand-coded Ajax development today requires a large skill set, so several interesting technologies have materialized to simplify it.

btw: can we stop linking to CIO mag, please? It has the absolute worst S/N ratio of any online mag out there, and the article content generally isn't that good either

It's worth noting that Esther Schindler (the submitter of this story) is the Senior Online Editor of CIO. Just sayin'.

It's a package of stories about Black Friday. The story specific to e-commerce within the package is here: http://www.cio.com/article/155800 Also, the timeline (where the planes/weather delays are mentioned) also has some ecommerce mishaps. It's by no means all-encompassing. Add some if you like, by using the comments section. Or write to me directly (knash@cio.com). I'd love to grow that timeline to really chronicle e-commerce screw-ups (and lessons learned, of course, of course). -kim

http://advice.cio.com/stephanie_overby/ibm_tries_to_patent_offshoring

http://www.cio.com/article/print/135700

For those who also hate paging through an article at the speed of advertising.

And the readable version

http://www.cio.com/article/print/135700

ROOTKITS ORIGINATED ON *NIX SYSTEMS GENTS... NOT WINDOWS!

http://www.cio.com/article/116250/A_Brief_History_ of_Malware_and_Cybercrime_/2

----

"Rootkits

When it began: 1970s-80s. Originally developed by hackers to hide traces of intruders on Unix computers, rootkits for all types of networked computers are packaged and sold on the Internet by the emerging malware development community. Perhaps the king of these programs is the open source rootkit FU, which can be downloaded freely here."

----

Thought I'd share the "little historical tidbit" with you all... in case you did not know that (I am sure you did, but I can be 'sarcastic funny', too!)...

And, while you're (imo @ least) apparently trying to make Windows users "look bad" & Microsoft + Windows as well?

All I can say is, try this: A CIS TOOL "Challenge to *NIX users @ /.", in a MultiPlatform test of online security (noted by SANS, no less):

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=267599&thre shold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=20203061

See you there, & GOOD LUCK, you will need it, OR some decent skills @ securing a *NIX variant running rig!

(+, While you're @ it, you'll be witness to HOW MANY *NIX HEADS RAN FROM THAT TEST HERE @ /. & how many times now (28++ now, & growing), from my score on it, ME the "lowly Windows user", no less!)

APK

P.S.=> BOTTOM-LINE: WELL, I guess, all I can say is this - Beat the score of 84.735/100 I obtained on the multiplatform CIS Tool test (noted by SANS, created by THE CENTER FOR INTERNET SECURITY) of online security with me using a Windows Server 2003 SP #2 setup, VS. your *NIX OF CHOICE, if you intend to "rib on windows", as is common practice here @ /., in a lot of statements I see here like - "(Insert *NIX variant here) is more secure or securable than Windows is" etc. et al!

(Note - My setup was fully custom hardened by yours truly, & I'd like to see your score results in a photo, vs. mine which is already @ that url above, with any of you folks & your *NIX rigs (hopefully, ALSO hardened for security as BEST YOU CAN!))...

Now - IF you somehow manage to do so (OR NOT, because I strongly think nobody here can by now, you will see what I mean by that in the URL of the test challenge I posted)??

Win vs. Lose? Not REALLY important to me, honestly - Fact is, I'd just like to discuss your methods, from a proof of result posted photo PREFERABLY from a SeLinux OR FreeBSD user, & what you agreed with, or could & could not solve, based on the CIS Tool's suggestions (everyone can learn here, *NIX fiends AND Windows folks, including myself)... thanks! apk

I posted an article that discussed the bubble a month or so ago and the craziness of companies like Google who were buying these Web 2.0 companies like waterfront condos in the housing bubble. See post here. http://advice.cio.com/michael_kavis/the_next_bubbl e_is_here

What happen to being the security realist, Kendall? I have to install a 3rd party firewall on my clients to be more secure, thats not convenient or practical. Same with installing virus protection. Same with Captas. And that is only scratching the surface. The reality is, you need to sacrifice convenience and practicality for security. Here is a reference that somewhat backs this claim: http://www.cio.com/article/102252/Security_Before_ Convenience_Say_Online_Bankers

TFA is over 10 pages of 3 paragraphs...

http://www.cio.com/article/print/41140 is much nicer to read.

Well this is interesting. It is the equivalent of asking a Nazi about Jews and expecting objectivity. Also MS is having trouble having people developing on their platform. They are losing developers for Mac OS and Linux. People know a sinking ship when they see one. Plus the subtle jabs they take at developers claiming that it is their software causing security problems (which is partly but not totally true) why would anyone want to develop for MS when OSS provides full flexibility. People can see the code and not come up with hackish solutions or workarounds to problems they may encounter. http://www.cio.com/article/122152/Microsoft_Window s_Loses_Ground_With_Developers_Survey_Says With Vista being a mess of compatibility and DRM/WDM/"Security" laden crap, it makes it hard for any real innovation to happen in the application space. I used to work for MS. One of the biggest gripes I heard was that drivers were always made wrong. Applications were usually buggy which caused problems with the OS. While again that is PARTIALLY true, part of the problem was the fact that I later learned (after I left MS for the real world) that coding for Windows platforms is a PITA. The closed nature makes everything a hackish effort. Workarounds here, hooks there. Linux, BSD and other open source kernels out there have easy access to the lowest level if necessary of the kernels and OS in general. This makes it extremly easy to integrate with a minimum to intermiediate learning curve (if you are coming off Visual Studio specifically)

You can read the entire thing on one page here: http://www.cio.com/article/print/125263

Quick list for those who don't care to click through one per page for 19 pages:

Or read the print version

http://www.cio.com/article/print/125263

http://www.cio.com/article/print/125263

Quick list for those who don't care to click through one per page for 19 pages:

Those wanting to save a lot of pain might also prefer the single-page print version of the article