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Hi. Thanks for toning it down!

I do agree that there are a lot of ways to usefully do things other than directly through the political power structure. For example, this column http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=111516 makes some very specific suggestions along those lines and, uh, I wrote it. ;) Really, please take a look. There are some areas where technologists' personal involvement is VERY badly needed.

Beyond that -- fortunately, I think you're being a little extremist in your view of how things are run. I've known a bunch of people in the Cabinet, and even more so at the Undersecretary and Assistant Secretary levels, and these folks are by no means all bought, paid for, blackmailed, controlled, or anything else. And I've known some rich/powerful people, in some cases pretty well. (E.g., there was a time that, whenever I had a new girlfriend, I'd bring her to SF to meet some of my friends, and Larry Ellison was one of those friends.)

Not that you don't have a good point directionally; but I think magnitude matters here as well as direction.

Afaik turnover is NOT the same as profit. Profit is what is left of your turnover when you have payed all you expenses, and in most areas of business 5% profit is quite good, and in some areas a typical profit rate can be as low as .1% in which case a 5% turnover fine would be devastating.

http://www.computerworld.com/news/2004/story/0,112 80,96840,00.html hints that micrsofts profit is around 30%, so 5% isn't gonna kill them.

A real solution would be end to end authentication and encryption. I wonder why none of the supreme innovators have thought of this yet. But then again the NoSuchAgency wouldn't be able to monitor our inbox or product vendors spam our inboxs.

To quote my favorite columnist,

Governments around the world are -- or are on the verge of -- tracking essentially all electronic communications. Examples include recent revelations of National Security Agency data capture, legislation in the U.S. and Europe that would mandate multiyear retention of all Internet connection data, massive government-plus-commercial data integration projects, biometric passports, national ID cards and electronic health records, to name a few. The net effect is simple but profound: Governments around the world are seeking access to substantially every bit of information about you.

True, this isn't an immediate threat. (We're talking about the largest data-integration projects in the history of the world -- and they're government projects. Imagine the implementation cycle.) But most of the technical approaches to limiting the dangers in this trend need to be reflected at system design time. What's more, the ones that fall purely in the legal sphere are clearly going to require years to achieve political adoption.

From A Public Policy Troika for Techno-Activists

Clicky

Here is another site with horror stories. Dive into:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/sharktank.do?c ommand=viewDaily&date=20060705
Computerworld's sharktank and swim for your life.

Thank you for your message.

The Comcast @Home product is, and has always been, designated as a residential service and does not allow the use of commercial applications. A VPN or Virtual Private Network is primarily used to connect Internet users to her or his work LAN from an Internet access point.

High traffic telecommuting while utilizing a VPN can adversely affect the condition of the network while disrupting the connection of our regular residential subscribers.

To accommodate the needs of our customers who do choose to operate VPN, Comcast offers the Comcast @Home Professional product. @Home Pro is designed to meet the needs of the ever growing population of small office/home office customers and telecommuters that need to take advantage of protocols such as VPN. This product will cost $95 per month, and afford you with standards which differ from the standard residential product.

If you're interested in upgrading your current Comcast @Home service to Comcast @Home Pro, please e-mail your name, address, and phone number to: sales@comcastpc.com. Prior to Sept 15th, you will be contacted by one of our Comcast @Home Pro representatives to discuss upgrading from your current Comcast @Home residential service.

While VPN is not a prohibited use of the @Home Pro product, Comcast does not provide support for VPN technology. All inquiries regarding VPN should be directed toward your company's network administrator.

Currently, the Comcast @Work commercial services do provide VPN support. If your company pays for your internet service, or if you would like to use supported VPN or IP tunneling, please contact our commercial services at 888-638-4338 or visit www.comcastwork.com.

If there is anything else we can help you with, please contact us. Thank you for choosing Comcast@Home.

Steve Comcast@Home Email Response Specialist

Stop talking about this like it has anything to do with video. This has nothing to do with video, and everything to do with them turning off telecommuting (indeed, any encrypted communication) by default.

The shoplifting analogy isn't quite there.

Actually, it's as if you walked out of Neiman Marcus, a security guard accused you of shoplifting, and then refused to tell you what you shoplifted.

Then, the guard pulls over his buddy, respected Yankee Group Laura Didio. She looks in your bag, then looks at the Neiman Marcus catalog, and announces on national media that you have stolen something from Neimann Marcus but she won't say what it is.

Three years later, during trial, the guard is still unable to explain what you stole from the store.

>it's hard to argue that a vague notion of "privacy" is more important then staying alive and safe.

There are two ways to explain this to people.

One is that mass eavesdropping hurts real security. If the FBI is checking out Domino's Pizza then they're not checking flight schools or infiltrating violent groups. http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9000515

The reason privacy is important is that government agencies with impossible missions tend to start hassling easy targets to make up for not being able to reach the important ones. How many of those average people have uploaded or downloaded music? How many of them realize that copyright infringers have been accused of funding terrorism?

Without privacy and due process protections, the guy in the high rise will be in more danger of becoming a terrorist suspect than of beomcing a terrorist victim.

When buying Microsoft Software the End User License Agreement (EULA) states that Microsoft can force
you to audit at it's own convenience
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=111186
which will be done by the Microsoft's Sales department.

So, yes, as long as you buy Microsoft (and probably Adobe) software this is what you should
expect. The auditing clause is not limited to England, but is a worlwide clause.

The IEEE , Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO and researhers such as Norm Matloff speak up against the H-1B abuse.

Lots of folks speak up against it.

The hired gun lobbyist Harris Miller loses to Jim Webb. Miller ran an unaplogetic pro H-1B and pro-outsourcing campaign. Seems the voters in Virginia don't like Harris Miller's record.

Heck, even Milton Friedman calls it a subsidy.

The IEEE , Department for Professional Employees, AFL-CIO and researhers such as Norm Matloff speak up against the H-1B abuse.

Lots of folks speak up against it.

The hired gun lobbyist Harris Miller loses to Jim Webb. Miller ran an unaplogetic pro H-1B and pro-outsourcing campaign. Seems the voters in Virginia don't like Harris Miller's record.

Heck, even Milton Friedman calls it a subsidy.

[full disclosure: I am European]

The reason why we see this flood of identity thefts from the US is because they have legislation forcing companies to publicly announce the occurence of such theft or at least notify the individuals affected. In the EU, no such legislation exists and companies will not disclose anything. Yes, we have data protection acts not focusing on particular industries or sectors but that doesn't mean identify theft does not occur. To make matters even worse, a recent study showed that the situation in the EU is actually worse!

Legislation requiring companies and governement agencies to full disclosure on identify (data) theft will drive data protection efforts in the future.

Link to study: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9001176 "Why isn't Europe suffering a wave of security breaches"

Well, get yourself a GPS Jammer.

You can bweak the Man's widdow pwane!!!

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/ar chives/2005/04/the_truth_about_1.html
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/lin ux/story/0,10801,82070,00.html
Laura DiDio, an analyst at The Yankee Group in Boston, said she was shown two or three samples of the allegedly copied Linux code, and it appeared to her that the sections were a "copy and paste" match of the SCO Unix code that she was shown in comparison.
DiDio and the other analysts were able to view the code only under a nondisclosure agreement, ... "The courts are going to ultimately have to prove this, but based on what I'm seeing ... I think there is a basis that SCO has a credible case," DiDio said. "This is not a nuisance case."

Watch the "expert" Laura Didio on video from a credible source:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/facts /videos/didio_video.wvx

Enjoy her!

*lol*

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/4515/945/

Apple had been offering and still continues to offer tech support from another third party BPO provider, TransWorks based here in Bangalore.

But sources claim that this has nothing to do with the kind of quality of service that the India tech support would offer. "I think it has more to do with financial feasibility of the centre rather than the quality of service. You have to keep in mind that no work had started - basically it was just mid-level support staff that had been hired apart from Kharbanda who was expected to grow this the Dell way."

http://www.ciol.com/content/search/showarticle1.as p?artid=84773

Many of the components used in the company's products are, in fact, produced by third-party vendors in Taiwan, China, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. Most of the company's portable products including MacBook Pro, iBooks, and iPods are manufactured by third-party vendors in China. "It makes sense for the company to invest and expand in these regions, instead of having a new facility in India," say analysts.

http://services.silicon.com/offshoring/0,380000487 7,39157100,00.htm
The company stressed it isn't cutting any US jobs, noting that its ranks are growing both in the United States and overall. The Apple representative said: "Our call centres in Austin and Sacramento also continue to grow."

Moaners can read this too :
http://www.computerworld.com/blogs/node/2648?sourc e=NLT_MGT&nlid=23

In a bizarre twist to the offshoring craze, The Boston Globe reports that some Indian high-tech companies that accept "offshoring" work from American companies are turning around and offshoring some of that work back to Americans. According to the May 30 story, INDIA TECH FIRMS SEEK US TALENT IN OFFSHORING TWIST, Tata Consultancy Services of Bangalore can't find enough workers in India to fill the 30,500 positions it needs to hire for this year so it plans to hire talent abroad, including 1,000 recruits in America. Some 9,500 positions out of 62,000 at Tata are Americans, according to the story.

Okay, so we use them to track humans after Homeland Security said using RFIDs to track humans is a bad idea. Brilliant!

Is this guy any relation to the borg.

"One key target would probably be the vital Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (Scada) systems in power plants and similar industries."

Only if your SCADA units are run on Windows and use the Internet to communicate.

"(SCADA) systems .. based on Windows 2000 and rely .. [on] the Internet .. for exchanging information

The decision to run the DHS computers on Windows isn't too wise either. And since the intelligence services have deliberatly weakened security so as they can monitor the bad guys it's hardly supprising that systems can be broken into so easily.

The US and Canada had the largest North American blackouts ever within weeks of Italy and the UK also having massive blackouts. People then were calling attention to the software involved but the story was never followed up.

Richard Clarke wrote about the weaknesses in the electric industry:

"Richard Clarke, a former cyber-security expert in the Bush administration, laments complacency. "People claim no one will ever die in a cyber-attack, but they're wrong. This is a serious threat."

Clarke says that each time the US government has tested the security of the electric power industry, he and his colleagues have been able to hack their way in, "sometimes through an obscure route like the billing system". He reveals that computer security officers at a number of chemical plants have told him privately that they are very concerned about the openness of their networks.

This was an article about software involved in the failures.

"Software failure cited in August blackout investigation"

(Computer World)
http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/securi ty/recovery/story/0,10801,87400,00.html

Here is the article from ComputerWorld: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyId=12&articleId=9000 831

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=printArticleBasic&articleId=9000829

will they ship with that file, too ?

You must not have seen the "Print this Story" button/link at the bottom

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=printArticleBasic&articleId=9000829

Their printer friendly version even keeps the text in the same size column, instead of spreading it across the width of the page.

I do realize it's a big deal for some people, because I'm one of those people, but most sites have some button/link that'll give you a single page.

Here is a link to the Human Readable version of this story that isn't split into 49853809 pages. Thank god for the "print this page" feature.

So, this is one of those annoying super advertisement sites. I recommend just using the print version instead of having to flip through every freaking page. The print version also has less ads.

here is the printable link http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=printArticleBasic&articleId=9000829

I'm sorry, but you are wrong

Perhaps the FBI is too busy chasing down NSA false positives.

Sorry, the top line of the above message got cut off. Here is is:

Here's my theory ( from http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?com mand=viewArticleBasic&articleId=111188 ) :

That disappeared in favor of dolphins. Why?

Unless Microsoft indemnifies it, this plugin is not really any better than the patent-encumbered Microsoft XML format.

Not that I've seen the plugin, but...

Would using MS Visual Studio and all MS dlls count as indemnification?

Dunno if I buy that. See:

http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/200 5/10/microsoft_will_.html
"QDOS became MS-DOS, ForeThought became Powerpoint, SoftDesign became Microsoft Project, Vermeer became FrontPage, PlaceWare became Live Meeting, Vicinity became a key part of MapPoint, nCompass Labs became Content Management Server, Bungie Studios became Halo, HotMail, Visio, Great Plains, Groove Networks"

Or...
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/os/win dows/story/0,10801,78739,00.html
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/m ar05/03-10GrooveQA.mspx
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/021405-micro soft-sybari.html

Microsoft originally targeted a 2005 launch for the new Windows, then pushed the release out to 2006 before announcing in March that Vista would again be delayed to improve the product's quality.

Am I the only one that remembers that "Longhorn" was supposed to follow XP about three years? I went a Googling and found plenty of chatter back in 2002 about how pissy customers would be if their new, expensive Software Assurance didn't include an upgrade to the new OS within three years. One of Microsoft's VPs even suggested MS would "do something" if the date slipped that far. It seems that the reporters don't remember anything preceding the original, official release date of 2005.

About 15% of the funding, awarded in mid-2000, had remained unspent, de Raadt said. According to de Raadt, two days before the funding was cut off, Jonathan Smith, the computer science professor in charge of the project at the University of Pennsylvania, phoned de Raadt. Smith told de Raadt that several people at the university and DARPA were uncomfortable with de Raadt's antiwar comments, which appeared in The Globe and Mail of Toronto in early April.

Source

He also said the recently announced Boot Camp software, which allows Intel-based Mac computers to run the Windows operating system, won't have a big impact on Adobe's Mac software lineup.

"For the majority of our products, writing directly to the Macintosh operating system is an advantage to the customers, and you will see us continue to do so and not work through Boot Camp or the Windows emulator because we think that will not be good for the majority of our customers," he said.

Apple's desktop market share is only 3.1%. That's lower than five years ago. Apple's "quest to desktop dominance" is not going anywhere.

    It would seem the trade journals are starting to notice this problem as well:

http://www.computerworld.com/networkingtopics/netw orking/story/0,10801,110978,00.html?SKC=networking -110978

As usual, Dvorak is on crack.

I'm not sure what he means by biggest, but microsoft's stupidist blunder was Bob and its most expensive blunder was the Cairo project (Cairo was later renamed and one of its most important element, OFS, is still nowhere in sight).

Internet exporer was not so much of a blunder as an expensive way to kill off Netscape (they were a much bigger threat then Dvorak makes out.

(the OT part) Still, at least Microsoft Bob was not a completely wasted effort - after all, you still have Rover the retriever to help you with searching in XP - and we all know that was worth waiting 10 years for...

in New Orleans, city's top IT manager is now fighting to keep a free municipal wireless network functioning at high speeds. http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/s tory/0,10801,110773,00.html More info : http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/services/200 6-03-28-new-orleans-wifi_x.htm?POE=TECISVA Talk about needs... Hmmmphh

Microsoft made the Genuine Advantage check optional at first, but it is now required for windows XP. They'll just be continuing the tradition with Vista which isn't a big surprise. What I wonder is if they'll leave it easily crackable like today's WGA check.

As a side note, I recently had an invalid WGA check on a machine I was working on. I noticed on the page that Microsoft will now sell you a valid key to make your pirated version of Windows legitimate. The problem with this is that buying a valid key for your pirated windows will not guarantee that you didn't install a system with a trojan or rootkit already on it. Since they're only selling license, you'll get no media to do a clean install. Bleh.

Microsoft lawsuit leads to e-mail destruction questions

Regardless of whether Homeland Security likes it or not, there is definitely a market for the technology. In fact, the government (of the people by the people) might even mandate such technology directly or indirectly by punishing companies for allowing consumer data to be stolen. In a reasonable world the government (of the people by the people) shouldn't need too many more stories like the Fidelity data loss to start trying to legislate solutions to the laxity of companies around security. Another option is that market forces push companies to tighten security: eg HP threatens to quit using Fidelity services unless security is tightened. Either way, legistation or market forces, there is a growing market for this technolgoy.

Back in the mid 90's Apple actively supported porting Linux to Mac hardware with the MkLinux project (working with OSF Research Institute.) It's a Linux distribution based on the Mach micro kernel. Jobs had Apple remove themselves from that project in 1998 and leave Linux on Mac to Terra Soft Solutions an Apple Value Added Reseller that sells Apple hardware with Yellow Dog Linux. The US Navy via Lockheed Martin is a customer of Terra Soft using XServes running Yellow Dog onboard submarines.

Companies use software to weed out candidates, but here are five strategies that help job-seekers get noticed.

  Twenty years ago, software engineer Fred Brooks famously observed that there was no silver bullet that could slay "the monster of missed schedules, blown budgets and flawed products." Today, the creation of software might seem as expensive, trouble-prone and difficult as ever.

And yet progress is being made. While there is still no silver bullet in sight, an array of new techniques promises to further boost programmer productivity, at least in some application domains.

Man vs. machine stories are an old standby in journalism.

Think back to John Henry racing a steam drill and forward to Garry Kasparov trying to outmaneuver IBM's Deep Blue in 1997 to the Onion tweaking the genre with its accountant battles Excel story.

But the latest twist on the meme takes it to the meta-level by raising the question: in the future, will you find your man vs. machine story relying on a human-edited source or from an algorithm?

Standing up for the human intellect, upstart Digg is betting that its formidable legion of users can find better and more interesting news faster than any algorithm Google -- or a number of upstart companies -- can code.

India Aims to Tame Soaring IT Wages is the headline for anyone too lazy to click.

From what little I know about holographic storage, write speeds are a lot slower than read speeds. Though if it could actually read at 160 MB/s like this article claims, why didn't they say that?

Of course, Microsoft and other vendors always get their patches correct the first time.

http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/ skills/story/0,10801,109600,00.html

1. " Students have always poured into the most lucrative and promising careers. If IT salaries doubled tomorrow, college students might give IT another look and start switching majors; the flow of newly minted technologists would quickly increase ."

The above quote is factually correct and describes how a free market works. In the labor market, a shortage of labor is a power force that boosts wages and improves working conditions. Eventually, wages rise sufficiently high that new workers enter a particular labor market (e.g. the market of computer programmers).

However, certain politicians oppose the idea of a free market for labor. When a labor shortage arises in the market for high-tech labor, such politicians attempt to damage the correcting force of the shortage by injecting H-1B workers into the market. When a labor shortage arises in the agricultural sector, such politicians attempt to damage the correcting force of the shortage by injecting illegal aliens into the market for unskilled labor. Both actions damage the ability of the labor market to function properly and, hence, suppress wages and working conditions.

A shortage of labor is not something that needs "fixing" by government intervention. The government does not intervene when there is a labor surplus -- like the surplus in the automobile sector (which is undergoing massive layoffs). Why does the government intervene when there is a labor shortage? Shortages are never permanent and require no government intervention in the form of H-1B workers or illegal aliens.

That observation takes us to the second quote.

2. " Former Intel CEO Craig Barrett has stated that wage differentials aren't the issue and that Intel would hire more U.S. engineers if it could find them ."

That quote is a bald-faced lie. There is no shortage of engineers at the proper salary. Intel management can find plenty of American engineers if Intel management doubled salaries and boosted working conditions by, for example, eliminating the bell curve that managers use to "grade" employees. See quote #1 above. Quote #1 contradicts quote #2.

Intel simply does not want to raise salaries or to boost working conditions.

Intel's lie takes us to the third quote.

3. " That sentiment was backed up by IT leaders at the Premier 100 conference, where 70% said that they hire the most qualified workers, regardless of citizenship ."

This quote is accurate. Contrary to the stated intentions of managers wanting to increase the H-1B cap, most managers do not hire Americans even if they are qualified. If both an American applicant and an H-1B applicant is qualified for a job, the manager will choose the applicant that is more qualified. That approach directly contradicts the stated intentions of managers from companies like Intel: the stated intention is that a manager will hire an American applicant meeting the qualifications but not necessarily offering better qualifications than a qualified H-1B applicant.

The H-1B program is a way for American companies to suppress wages and to avoid improving working conditions. The H-1B program damages the correcting force of shortages. A shortage in a free market is a normal force that requires no intervention by the government to "fix".

H-1B workers come from countries like India and China, which do not have free markets. The Indian and Chinese governments have damaged their own economies by suppressing free markets. H-1B workers represent indirect intervention in the American free market by the Indian and Chinese governments. Their actions damage how the labor market should work in the American free market.

Washington should allow

IT is this same thing that is helping oursourcing. We all know that outsourcing survives only on demand. Yes cost cutting is an advantage of outsourcing too, BUt it is secondary. Companies in the USA and UK are forced to employ H1B visa candidates and are forced to send projects to offshore programmers in India only because there is demand for quality IT professionals. http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/outs ourcing/story/0,10801,105969,00.html "U.S. Senate yesterday approved up to 30,000 additional foreign-worker visas a year in a program popular with technology vendors. " and the main reason "Technology trade groups have called for an increase in the cap, saying they can't find enough workers with specialized skills."