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According to Computer Weekly, this is apparently not a new trend. In the TFA they link to one of their own articles from 2001 that says basically the same thing.

The TFA goes on to quote someone as saying, "We need to show [young people] the variety of roles in IT and the importance that IT carries today. IT is at the heart of business these days and there are real opportunities now to have a career in IT which will ultimately lead to a position on the board."

A position on the board? That is supposed to be "not boring"?

There is no doubt on OOXML. It's bad by pretty much every metric one can come up with. While the Software Freedom Law Center contribution is very valuable, the summary reduces this value and snubs ISO at the same time: the decision and process is not up to MS here, it is up to ISO. ISO is not in the business of creating standards. It has the purpose of evaluating finished specifications, which OOXML is clearly not.

There's not a single implementation of OOXML in the wild. There are variations and partial implementations, but since the specification itself is neither complete nor finished, it's not ready for ISO.

All MS is doing here is wasting time and money. When MS gets serious about interoperability, it will adopt the OpenDocument Format.

According to Bush, every American can now get affordable broadband.

Because Bush defines "broadband" as 200Kbps (yes, kilobits). And "everyone" means that even if only one person in a ZIPcode could buy 200Kbps broadband, that ZIPcode is checked off as if everyone in it could get it. And considering the $TRILLIONS Bush has burned in handouts to his cronies (especially the telcos, these days his favorites), the definition of "affordable" is left as an exercise to the reader.

Those relatively few readers whose broadband connection can access this page.

Meanwhile, Japan has already deployed 100Mbps to 85% of its households; their average is 93Mbps; expects ubiquitous access to 100Mbps by 2010. And maybe they're not even lying about it like Bush is.

What other competitive advantages over our foreign competition has the US completely squandered in the decade since we were sitting on top of the world, by spinning our wheels (or tank treads) while the rest of the world has been busy beating us at our own games?

1. The packets are numbered so they can be put back together in order, but TCP only knows source, destination, and next hop addresses and has no control over how it is delivered. If the first packet goes through router A and the routing protocol directs the next packet to router B you could still have the second packet arrive first.

2. Not all network hardware can handle jumbo packets (>1500 bytes) and some break up jumbo packets into smaller ones. FCP does 2048 bytes by default.

3. According to Computer Weekly cheapest is $650 if you want one comparable to a fibre card.

Just because Microsoft can't even deal with known viruses?

Or because the most anticipated feature of Windows 2008 Server is security? (What does that say about current Windows servers?)

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/06/01/ 224501/data-deduplication-rockets-ahead.htm

http://www.techworld.com/storage/features/index.cf m?featureid=2976

It also lists the major providers of the solutions. Avamar (now owned by EMC) and DataDomain offer a software only solution that may be the most cost effective if you can provide the storage.

Has this got anything to do with the BBC's two-billion-GBP computer outsourcing deal with Siemens? Way back in 1999 the BBC had its own Linux-savvy wizards who did a fantastic job on the BBC website and other tasks:

http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/1176/1/

I'd like to thank them for making sure the BBC's watch/listen pages work on my GNU/Linux/Mozilla/Realplayer computer at home. Now, it's all gone to Siemens, apparently:

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2004/10/01/ 205660/bbc-completes-2bn-outsourcing-deal-with-sie mens.htm

Anyone inside BBC or Siemens care to comment?

I assume that the parent was modded "funny" as a piss-take. Maybe it was meant that way, maybe it's conspiratorial ramblings, but the OP's scepticism is not entirely baseless if this British case is anything to go by. (More here and here). For those willing to dismiss analysis of that case as fringe ramblings, note that it was reported across the world and the subject of several documentaries.

You might want to tell Peugot that, as theyre rolling out 20k _desktops_ with SUSE on, and you also might want to email the city of Munich, they are migrating to Debian. At least you should have a quick chat with these people: http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/02/21/ 221941/kingfisher-migrates-to-red-hat-linux.htm (I know you said end users, I just could not resist).

"I bet 85% of the people responding haven't even read the article"

I stopped taking notice of Gartner and the like a long time ago ..

"Linux is still not ready for widescale deployment on the desktop, according to analyst firm Gartner"

"Would their respect for Gartner's advice change if they knew the firm is indirectly owned by dozens of big-money investors who control some of the same companies Gartner evaluates?"

".. the Gartner Group (Framingham, MA) estimates that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a networked Windows 95 PC is $9784 a year .."

"Gartner believes that most of the Linux shipments will eventually have illegal copies of Windows installed--a fact that makes Linux's seeming dominance of this market somewhat misleading,"

was Re:Feeling threatened?

The Brits are getting better and better at these kind of projects

Any IT success with the congestion charge is more an exception than the rule.For example, IT in the NHS has been, in general, a disaster.

With UK government IT, if it doesn't generate income for the government it's pretty much garunteed to be a costly failure - and when it is revenue generating, they still have a habit of failure.

The Brits are getting better and better at these kind of projects

Any IT success with the congestion charge is more an exception than the rule.For example, IT in the NHS has been, in general, a disaster.

With UK government IT, if it doesn't generate income for the government it's pretty much garunteed to be a costly failure - and when it is revenue generating, they still have a habit of failure.

Funny. I installed the Wikipedia search engine into Firefox a while ago. I've since upgraded (thanks to the fact that Firefox is full of more holes than IE) it to the latest version.

Surprise, surprise, my Wikipedia search engine vanished.

Yeah, they're only two clicks away, as long as you NEVER upgrade your browser to solve the latest Gaping Firefox Security Flaw (tm).

Don't get me wrong, many organization do pay for Linux service/support for service, however, on the ends of the spectrum many organizations do small installs.

Small business, bulk hosting companies, and realy gigantic companies tend to roll their own Linux or use Free as in Beer distributions. Look at Google, for example. Note that Debian controls 16% of the linux server market: http://www.computerweekly.com/Article1319

That's 16% that goes unrepresented in marketshare numbers. Sun's OSS Solaris is going to have this same effect in the future.

Wow, thats the first time I ever heard of Windows Updates being refered to as bars of gold. Seriously, though, thats the only time I use IE anymore.

Wasn't there something posted about Microsoft starting to support Firefox for its own websites including for Windows Update? Yeah...here Firefox Windows Update Article

So yeah - even Microsoft is supporting more than one browser for some of their most lock-in tying websites (e.g. Windows Update).

Interesting. The FCC might disagree with their right to put that clause in a contract. See this article.

Wait...

'It's had more security bugs in this past year than IE'

http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2005/07/26/ 211088/MicrosoftworksonfixasFirefoxisupdated.htm

True.

'Note: I still USE Firefox on all my machines but it's because I don't mind wasting time patching it every few weeks when another vulnerability comes out.'

Favourable comment regardless fo previous fact.


'Don't get me wrong, I love the features of Firefox but from a security standpoint I realize I'm taking a risk by using it.'

http://news.com.com/Symantec+Mozilla+browsers+more +vulnerable+than+IE/2100-1002_3-5873273.html
http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml ?articleID=163100338

Also True.

So how exactly is this flamebait?

People who graded this as a flame are burying there heads in the sand. Firefox has become more popular it has therefore come under more attack and yes it has been found not to be particularly secure. Theres a simple reason why. No Web Browser non of them witout exception are secure nor will they probably ever be.

Take a step back from your MS bashing two seconds to realise that IE has actually been working hard on sealing its bugs up non stop since its conception. MS wasnt leaving bugs in for a laugh, and the people working on this arnt rubbish programmers or incompetant. The problem is simply overwhelming.

The idea that Firefox, which hasnt had years of being tested against a vast army of crackers, and has only even been a particular target for spyware and such relatively recently, would be more secure is ludicrous.

Now whether the speed and how they handle the security flaws is good enough to counteract the greater numbers of bugs is another argument and not one Id want to speculate on.

since Massachusetts is MS's customer, I feel MS's response is unreasonable

You'd certainly think so, seeing how Microsoft is bending over backwards to help Newham Council do everything it requires.

Perhaps Newham should ask for Open Document support?

link

-ZK

Yeah, and it was known since october last year

See ComputerWeekly for an article with a nice timeline and more specifics on where he attacked. Note that he's considered an "average hacker" in this article, which to my reading of the facts seems fair.

This all happened back in 2001/2002 but he fought extradition to the US until this past week apparently.

This military publication states that he didn't get to any classified info.

Wired covers a bit more on how he got caught. They tracked down his copy of RemotelyAnywhere.

Microsoft .net is now solidly entrenched in the top 10, where it has been for three quarters, while C# has risen to its highest ever position of 13th. C# is the skill showing the biggest growth in demand in the top 25, while .net featured in more than double the number of ads of a year ago.
Source

Growth of .net doesn't seem to be letting up, 2 years ago you would easily find triple the number of java jobs compared .net jobs. Now the numbers are almost even. I'd assume the same time next year, there will be more .net jobs.

Personally I can't wait for the KDE response which scolds the Firefox developers for having such huge and stupid security holes in their browser.

Uh, dude, they're already fixed

The most recent licence, signed in February of this year, "licensed several hundred drivers to connect, essentially, peripheral devices to the operating system", he added.

Sun's Loiacono disagreed. "The motivation we have is very different from what [Microsoft] have for licensing," he said. "I never want to be lumped into any categories with Microsoft other than profitability."

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

You are witnessing a transformation...

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

You are witnessing a transformation...

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

You are witnessing a transformation...

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

You are witnessing a transformation...

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=138415&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =2&liChannelID=22&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage=1/

Do you see?

But then, maybe they're all wrong and Mrs. DiDio is right. After all, she's an analyst, right?

In the UK, police can already take a DNA sample if you're arrested for any crime (even if you're not charged, let alone convicted). Samples are kept indefinitely and added to the national DNA database, which could be sold to private companies or cross-referenced with the National Identity Register to find out the subject's current name and address.

Should put Cisco in an interesting position, since John Chambers declared they are going to be a Chinese company.

The Chinese are pretty big on Linux because they don't like to pay royalties or licenses to non Chinese corporations so they don't much want Microsoft controlling their IT infrastructure in the long run.

Unless you live in China Cisco is very deserving of a boycott because they are selling themselves and the rest of the world down the river by moving all of their capital and IP to China. Chambers also sounds especially stupid in his willingness to do whatever the Chinese tell him to do. You have to wonder exactly at what point America's business leaders transitioned from being some of the best and most ruthless competitors in the world to being complete and utter suckers. Guess thats what dangling cheap oppressed labor, and a rapidly growing potentially giant market in front of them does. American business men will sell their mother to the devil for those two things.

"China will become the IT centre of the world and we can have a healthy discussion about whether that's in 2020 or 2040."

"What we're trying to do is outline an entire strategy of becoming a Chinese company," Chambers said."

"Our contract manufacturers, at my request, and candidly at the request of the leaders in your country, began to move our contract manufacturers here to China," Chambers said.

"While this is certainly a concern, what are the overall effects of such a mass departure?"

In the case of Carly Fiorina all indications are the effects are overwhelming positive. Though rumours were circulating she might be tapped by the Bush administration to lead the World Bank, or a similar position of great influence, continuing the Bush administration policy of promoting incompetence. not clear if Carly has a clue about economics though she does have degrees in business administration. She does grasp the one principal apparently most important to todays business leaders and politicians, ""There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore,"

The article isn't clear if this exodus is U.S. only or globally. If its U.S. only perhaps its just an indicator that women are more astute and more career and survival savvy. IT is NOT a good profession since the bubble burst unless maybe you work at Google. I suspect most of the people who cashed in on the bubble were more the con artists than the IT professionals anyway.

Let's hop in the way back machine and remember John Chambers last year prognosticating on the future of IT in America:

"China will become the IT centre of the world and we can have a healthy discussion about whether that's in 2020 or 2040."

"What we're trying to do is outline an entire strategy of becoming a Chinese company," Chambers said.

There is great irony in American business and political elite bragging about the superiority of "Freedom and Democracy", "Free Markets" and Capitalism as they rush to embrace a Socialist Dictatorship and transfer most of America's wealth there. The routinely point out China's education system is superior, labor is firmly controlled and oppressed so they have a "disciplined" work force, every aspect of their markets, including their currency, are heavily manipulated. They also routinely implement massive trade barriers which are requiring companies like Cisco and IBM to transfer massive numbers of jobs, capital, market access and intellectual property to China in order to gain access to Chinese markets which are decidely not free.

There is great irony in this hypocrisy. Its pretty obvious America's business and political leaders dont want "Freedom and Democracy", they want dictatorship, manipulated markets, and cheap, oppressed labor. Since its difficult to retrofit this system on the U.S. at this point it appears they are just moving all their wealth where such a system is already in place.

Here is a quick summary of the new U.S. economy. Bottomline is if you want to have a future the career fields you want to be in are:

- Business administration
- Marketing
- Service jobs that can't be outsourced and where you aren't competing against illegal immigrants

The long term future in business administration and marketing is open to doubt once the Chinese and Indians have reached the point they no longer need their American partners (i.e. after they've learned the markets, once American markets collapse due to the fundemental unsoundness of the current U.S. economy and they possess all the production capacity and IP).

All in all its become pretty apparently American politicians, business leaders and shareholders are selling their own nation down the river in the name of short term profits and their personal wealth. It appears likely the U.S. economy could be collapsing and the stock markets would still flourish since most large U.S. companies are rushing to globalization that they can probably continue to be profitable even if the U.S. economy is deteriorating. Stock markets are most probably riding a wave of improved profitability from exploiting cheap Chinese labor and goods. Globalized American companies can flourish while America does not.

You have to wonder if all the

Who the hell modded this insightful?

I really don't feel like typing out any explanation, so here are just a few relevant articles.

Sun is SCO's last major business partner left. It was a stupid business decision (or perhaps a payoff from Microsoft) that led them to buy a SCO license that let them offer an indemnity clause. But certainly no threat to SCO, but rather a large payment and almost certianly an ongoing royalty stream.

In what way is signing the biggest license deal a company every had a rifle? Sun is the only thing keeping SCO alive, now that BayStar got bad PR for playing Microsoft's game, and Royal Bank of Canada woke up.

Using Accentures implementation as an example doesn't say much about DCE/RPCs robustness. It has been plagued by problems as Computer Weekly reports.

Office is the standard, and for 99% of people that use it, it's flawless.

Great to know MS Office isn't responsible for all these problems

Microsoft will earn $38 bn in 2005.

IBM received $23.2 bn in 2004.

Martin Riley, HP's Alphaserver business manager, admitted the migration would take some time. "HP has staked its future on its servers being architected around Itanium, whether they are HP-UX or OpenVMS. Itanium has a 20-year lifespan. Customers will not move immediately [to Itanium], and most are planning their transitions in 2006."

Sun has to make a living somehow. Linux has already eaten into its marketshare. Not only sun wants to bad mouth linux it has started selling Windows too. Refer to this article http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=135547&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =1&liChannelID=9&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage= 1/

Part of IBM is smart...the stupid part of IBM (the mini/mainframe side) is still trying to charge $200k for an AS/400... that is comparable to a $5k HP Linux box."

I know what you're actually saying, but: if you're IBM and you're selling a $5k machine for $200k and can find 700,000 people a year who will buy it, that sounds pretty damn smart to me.

This ComputerWeekly's article says there was a failure of a communications satellite over the weekend that knocked out US broadband services supplied by StarBand Communications. The total loss of Intelsat's Americas-7 satelllite forced StarBand to move customers to a different satellite. StarBand did not say how many subscribers were affected, but is attempting to provide them with a temporary dial-up service.

Third world demand for stolen components seems to have tailed off, according to this article.

It's well known that EDS are incompetant and unprofessional, costing UK taxpayers hundreds millions of pounds. Examples include tax, welfareand air safety. In fact they seem to be awarded contracts by default despite not a single success with projects running hundreds of millions over budget and those that aren't a couple of years late are junked as a massive write-off.

It's well known that the UK government are in the pocket of EDS and Microsoft. The worst thing is that it's not intentional. The people in charge of making these decisions are complete non-techies and haven't heard of any IT company that aren't a regular in the new headlines of the FT. It's not corruption, it's basically a lack of education.

Phillip.

It's well known that EDS are incompetant and unprofessional, costing UK taxpayers hundreds millions of pounds. Examples include tax, welfareand air safety. In fact they seem to be awarded contracts by default despite not a single success with projects running hundreds of millions over budget and those that aren't a couple of years late are junked as a massive write-off.

It's well known that the UK government are in the pocket of EDS and Microsoft. The worst thing is that it's not intentional. The people in charge of making these decisions are complete non-techies and haven't heard of any IT company that aren't a regular in the new headlines of the FT. It's not corruption, it's basically a lack of education.

Phillip.

China couldn't care less if Linux is breaking patents - their response to GM's claim of car design theft should explain that. Here's a link to Forbe's article on that http://www.google.ie/search?q=cache:DRIMvkRStB8J:w ww.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2004/09/06/ap1531296.html+g m+china+car+copied&hl=en&client=firefox-a/

If Intel's efforts will bring down the price of PCs in India, its an excellent move, and of course, with relatively cheap admins at their disposal, Banking and other firms wouldn't think twice to cease the opportunity, like AIB did. http://www.computerweekly.com/Article131652.htm/

Computer Weekly

Yeah you slashdork whore... post AC!

Like this:

another link, but done AC so you dont look like a desperate fag

It was down even when it showed up in the Mysterious Future, and yeah, I did mail the editor about it...

http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/article.asp ?liArticleID=134810&liArticleTypeID=1&liCategoryID =1&liChannelID=13&liFlavourID=1&sSearch=&nPage =1 is a brand new article about MS giving advance notice of security updates, I guess it's the same piece of news.

According to This Report it is stated that Mac OS-X is easier to exploit than MS-Windoze !!