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According to this and this article, close to half of all IT workers could be displaced in as little as two years. International outsourcing, contractors, part-timers and consultants will do most of the work. If you want to work in IT for the rest of your career, you need to be planning your strategy now. So quit munching pizza and watching cartoons and figure out what you want to be when you grow up.

Maybe the analysts are wrong, but do you want to bet your career on it?

The warning signs are out there.

According to this and this article, close to half of all IT workers could be displaced in as little as two years. International outsourcing, contractors, part-timers and consultants will do most of the work. If you want to work in IT for the rest of your career, you need to be planning your strategy now. So quit munching pizza and watching cartoons and figure out what you want to be when you grow up.

Maybe the analysts are wrong, but do you want to bet your career on it?

The warning signs are out there.

The Internet was shown to be a scale-free network by U. Notre Dame physicist Barabasi. It means that the majority of the Web Page Requests is only for a fraction of the total Web Pages (the 'hubs').
Thus the 98% DNS Queries might be needed for only a minority of connections (I am assuming that Web Traffic is the bulk of Internet Traffic here).

Computerworld

Cnet

Internetnews

Infoworld

And, of course, Microsoft Watch.

there are still people out there that have problems turning on computers
Maybe this would help?

Speaking of which. Spammers are getting more sophisticated.

----Stories you'll not see on "/."
Spain uncovers hi-tech cashpoint fraud

First-ever dividend for Microsoft shares

Microsoft's privacy officer resigns

GameSpy could let crackers mount network DDoS attacks

Q3 2002 results are in: "IBM was the star of the quarter" quoted here

The computerworld article goes on to say of total server market for Q3
IBM 32%
HP 24.5%
Dell 7.7%
Sun 12.6%

Read the article for Intel-based server breakdown, and Unix server breakdown

No, dress is not itself the issue.

A dress code is obviously required in some contexts. Less so in others. I'll dress for a customer meeting, but if a company inflexibly insists on enforcing the policy everywhere -- policy for policy's sake -- what does that say about their culture and management?

Stories abound where policy or management has foiled:

- Ergonomics and working conditions: "In the meantime, my doctor recommended that I spread my keyboarding out over the weekends. I was to work 4 hours per day Friday through Monday, as opposed to 8 hours on Friday and Monday. Microsystems countermanded my doctor's orders, stating that they wanted me to rest my wrists on the weekends." Then illegally fires him while he's on scheduled disability leave.

- Product design Engineer is fired for not doing what he's been forbidden to do.

- Responsible planning: IT manager notices paper prices go up next month, so orders a 6-month supply in advance. Boss forces her to return it all and pay restocking fees. More important to follow the "budget" than to save money!

- Risk management and employee safety: Consultant wants webmail so he doesn't have to carry a laptop back and forth to a client in a seedy district. But laptop owners are not allowed to have webmail because they already "have" email. IT says: "It's company policy that we would rather lose a $1,600 laptop than to give you a free Web-based e-mail client."

- Can't even categorize this one: "'Why is the wrong day's backup tape in the server?' boss asks. IT admin points out that the backup system hasn't worked in two years, so why waste the time? Wrong, says boss: 'Just because it doesn't work, doesn't mean we don't put the tapes in there.'"

And these are just the few I remember lately. A strict dress code isn't inherently a disaster, but it's a warning sign. (In this economy, though, it's not a showstopper anymore. You take what you can get.)

---
Dum de dum.

No, dress is not itself the issue.

A dress code is obviously required in some contexts. Less so in others. I'll dress for a customer meeting, but if a company inflexibly insists on enforcing the policy everywhere -- policy for policy's sake -- what does that say about their culture and management?

Stories abound where policy or management has foiled:

- Ergonomics and working conditions: "In the meantime, my doctor recommended that I spread my keyboarding out over the weekends. I was to work 4 hours per day Friday through Monday, as opposed to 8 hours on Friday and Monday. Microsystems countermanded my doctor's orders, stating that they wanted me to rest my wrists on the weekends." Then illegally fires him while he's on scheduled disability leave.

- Product design Engineer is fired for not doing what he's been forbidden to do.

- Responsible planning: IT manager notices paper prices go up next month, so orders a 6-month supply in advance. Boss forces her to return it all and pay restocking fees. More important to follow the "budget" than to save money!

- Risk management and employee safety: Consultant wants webmail so he doesn't have to carry a laptop back and forth to a client in a seedy district. But laptop owners are not allowed to have webmail because they already "have" email. IT says: "It's company policy that we would rather lose a $1,600 laptop than to give you a free Web-based e-mail client."

- Can't even categorize this one: "'Why is the wrong day's backup tape in the server?' boss asks. IT admin points out that the backup system hasn't worked in two years, so why waste the time? Wrong, says boss: 'Just because it doesn't work, doesn't mean we don't put the tapes in there.'"

And these are just the few I remember lately. A strict dress code isn't inherently a disaster, but it's a warning sign. (In this economy, though, it's not a showstopper anymore. You take what you can get.)

---
Dum de dum.

No, dress is not itself the issue.

A dress code is obviously required in some contexts. Less so in others. I'll dress for a customer meeting, but if a company inflexibly insists on enforcing the policy everywhere -- policy for policy's sake -- what does that say about their culture and management?

Stories abound where policy or management has foiled:

- Ergonomics and working conditions: "In the meantime, my doctor recommended that I spread my keyboarding out over the weekends. I was to work 4 hours per day Friday through Monday, as opposed to 8 hours on Friday and Monday. Microsystems countermanded my doctor's orders, stating that they wanted me to rest my wrists on the weekends." Then illegally fires him while he's on scheduled disability leave.

- Product design Engineer is fired for not doing what he's been forbidden to do.

- Responsible planning: IT manager notices paper prices go up next month, so orders a 6-month supply in advance. Boss forces her to return it all and pay restocking fees. More important to follow the "budget" than to save money!

- Risk management and employee safety: Consultant wants webmail so he doesn't have to carry a laptop back and forth to a client in a seedy district. But laptop owners are not allowed to have webmail because they already "have" email. IT says: "It's company policy that we would rather lose a $1,600 laptop than to give you a free Web-based e-mail client."

- Can't even categorize this one: "'Why is the wrong day's backup tape in the server?' boss asks. IT admin points out that the backup system hasn't worked in two years, so why waste the time? Wrong, says boss: 'Just because it doesn't work, doesn't mean we don't put the tapes in there.'"

And these are just the few I remember lately. A strict dress code isn't inherently a disaster, but it's a warning sign. (In this economy, though, it's not a showstopper anymore. You take what you can get.)

---
Dum de dum.

No, dress is not itself the issue.

A dress code is obviously required in some contexts. Less so in others. I'll dress for a customer meeting, but if a company inflexibly insists on enforcing the policy everywhere -- policy for policy's sake -- what does that say about their culture and management?

Stories abound where policy or management has foiled:

- Ergonomics and working conditions: "In the meantime, my doctor recommended that I spread my keyboarding out over the weekends. I was to work 4 hours per day Friday through Monday, as opposed to 8 hours on Friday and Monday. Microsystems countermanded my doctor's orders, stating that they wanted me to rest my wrists on the weekends." Then illegally fires him while he's on scheduled disability leave.

- Product design Engineer is fired for not doing what he's been forbidden to do.

- Responsible planning: IT manager notices paper prices go up next month, so orders a 6-month supply in advance. Boss forces her to return it all and pay restocking fees. More important to follow the "budget" than to save money!

- Risk management and employee safety: Consultant wants webmail so he doesn't have to carry a laptop back and forth to a client in a seedy district. But laptop owners are not allowed to have webmail because they already "have" email. IT says: "It's company policy that we would rather lose a $1,600 laptop than to give you a free Web-based e-mail client."

- Can't even categorize this one: "'Why is the wrong day's backup tape in the server?' boss asks. IT admin points out that the backup system hasn't worked in two years, so why waste the time? Wrong, says boss: 'Just because it doesn't work, doesn't mean we don't put the tapes in there.'"

And these are just the few I remember lately. A strict dress code isn't inherently a disaster, but it's a warning sign. (In this economy, though, it's not a showstopper anymore. You take what you can get.)

---
Dum de dum.

Removable Hard-disk System:
A consortium of companies developing a removable hard-disk system for consumer use called the Information Versatile Disk for Removable usage (iVDR) plans to unveil a prototype 1.8-in. drive with a serial ATA interface for the first time at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) next month, an iVDR consortium representative said this week. The iVDR system will be shown outside of Japan for the first time at the event, which will take place in Las Vegas in January.

(here)

This thread was listed as the top Sci/Tech story this morning on google :-) ...

AT&T/DoCoMo Deal For W-CDMA Deployment In US
Slashdot - 3 hours ago
murky.waters writes "The specifics of several amendments to the original deal are spelled out in a news.com article: AT&T gets $6.2 billion from NTT DoCoMo, Japan's largest telecom, for deploying a third generation wireless network in four of ...
NTT DoCoMo's $6 billion AT&T guarantee BusinessWeek
AT&T Wireless could owe $6B if W-CDMA rollout is late ComputerWorld

• Here
• Or here
• Or even here

"Out-of-work programmers and IT project managers who are struggling to find employment might want to take a cue from a group of 2,000-plus IT marketing professionals who have created a virtual job board aimed at helping place them in hard-to-find jobs."

The big online job boards are dead, dead, dead. Real jobs are being posted on alumni egroups and niche boards like Software Product Marketing eGroup.

With shrinking budgets and a plentiful supply of candidates, recruiters and companies are no longer willing to pay big hairy job boards that return thousands of ill-suited candidates.

So boys and girls, time to join forces and create an "open source" job board.

An article in ComputerWorld ("Panel Advises U.S. IT Pros To Consider Changing Roles") has found similar handwriting on similar walls.

Techie careers are going the way that factory work did. The remaining jobs in America will be the 3M's: Management, Marketing, and McDonald's. Nobody has figured out a way to outsource these so far.

The sun is setting on the American Nerd. Let's face it for what it is.

Hell, even basketball is being outsourced. Part of the reason the Lakers are falling from grace is that many teams are getting better deals on foriegn players, and dictated salary caps limit what Laker owners can pay. Sacramento's NBA team is probably 50% non-citizens. Not to mention the "new Shaq", Yao Ming in Houston, a Chinese citizen.

This is news? Microsoft is constantly battling people in court! This is Just Another Lawsuit, folks. By the way, if you are interested, take a look at Computerworld's excellent coverage of Microsoft's legal battles:

Microsoft's Legal Battles

Despite there being at least two stories here on Slashdot concerning Home Depot's move to Linux, there hasn't been a single peep about the fact they abandoned the effort because Linux was not up to the task. In fact, you will find precious few actual success stories concerning Linux, just a lot of "me-too" pressers. It would appear the only places Linux is getting any real traction is where socialist governments and dictators have mandated its use. What a shame that it can't stand on its technical merits, but instead has to use politics and ideology to get acceptance.

For those who missed it

First of all, someone mentioned above that "we all know that most laptop thefts are not by criminals that want data". While I have not seen any statistics one way or another, I think the different components of a laptop are worth more to different people. To a basic consumer, the hardware itself is probably worth more than their vast archive of Britney Spears mp3s (you're not ashamed, are you?). However, from a corporate or government perspective, intellectual property or intelligence is worth orders of magnitude more than the actual hardware cost. The hardware value is going to decrease over time anyway, but information in the wrong hands can put a company out of business or allow other nations to build nuclear weapons that much more readily.

Secondly, it is possible to have tokens with some intelligence (unlike RFID cards) yet don't require an internal power source. There are a number of companies that have developed contactless smart cards that might prove useful for this project:

FARGO

HID Corp.

Inside Contactless

Granted, these products don't have much more range than 10cm and a smart card is not necessarily a form factor that is best for this application, but the technology does exist. It would seem the iPaq and 802.11 connection they use for their research is good enough for proof-of-concept.

Thirdly, for people who have mentioned Scramdisk and DriveCrypt, did you even read the research paper? They aren't worried so much about encrypting the whole filesystem. That's been done before (with the products mentioned, plus CFS and MS's EFS). They're more concerned about the files that may be in the disk cache. Also, it's not the encryption process that's the annoyance for the user, it's the decryption process. Sure, you can easily lock the screen with a swift keystroke. But usually you're required to type your password in every time you want to decrypt. This "token" that they refer to could be considered like an agent in the ssh world, or doing a kinit in the Kerberos world. You authenticate to the token once, then it does the strong authentication for the decryption for you for a fixed period of time.

Oh, and the lost token concern? That's what key escrow is for and could potentially be considered outside the scope of this research. If data recovery is a concern, organizations can store a backup of the key (securily of course!) that can be used to decrypt the data without requiring the token (i.e. pull the drive and read the data with speciallized software). Key escrow is common practice at many organizations. However, an escrowed encryption key should NOT be used for data signing as non-repudiation becomes much more difficult to prove. Besides, the authentication method and encryption method should be sufficiently separated so that in the event that one of the keys is compromised, the other component is not affected.

So I had a look at the screen, and was suprised to find a Red Hat icon instead of a Start button in the lower left hand corner.

This turns out to be old news, but still a pleasant surprise.

Maybe it has to do with their decision to choose Microsoft for POS instead of Linux?
_-_-_

story

Home Depot and the Dark side

The Home Depot Inc. last week announced a 12-month rollout of new point-of-sale terminals and self-checkout stations that employ technology from NCR Corp., Microsoft Corp. and 360 Commerce Inc.

Try this link to what is probably hinted at: http://www.computerworld.com/hardwaretopics/hardwa re/story/0,10801,76511,00.html

Whilst towards the end they got their act together, the inital response was the same (perhaps even more dubious) than any other vendor. First, deny any problem exists - then try and cover it up (some customers had to sign non-disclosure agreements about the problem, apparently in return for Sun's commitment to fix it in a timely manner). Lastly, claim that the problem caused "no data loss" and was someone elses fault anyway.

If your Compaq server is giving you problems, in the worst case you can ditch it for another brand, eg Dell. If your Sun hardware has an endemic problem, and all your software is build around Solaris, where do you go ?

This is not a tirade against Sun, in general their hardware is a lot better than most, and Solaris remains one of the benchmarks against which other *nix's are judged. It is just a reminder that even the big boys can have quality control and/or reliability problems.

Whilst towards the end they got their act together, the inital response was the same (perhaps even more dubious) than any other vendor. First, deny any problem exists - then try and cover it up (some customers had to sign non-disclosure agreements about the problem, apparently in return for Sun's commitment to fix it in a timely manner). Lastly, claim that the problem caused "no data loss" and was someone elses fault anyway.

If your Compaq server is giving you problems, in the worst case you can ditch it for another brand, eg Dell. If your Sun hardware has an endemic problem, and all your software is build around Solaris, where do you go ?

This is not a tirade against Sun, in general their hardware is a lot better than most, and Solaris remains one of the benchmarks against which other *nix's are judged. It is just a reminder that even the big boys can have quality control and/or reliability problems.

I think the author is saying that the source code should be included along with the binaries. Presumably distribution of the source would be restricted just like it already is for the binaries. So you could look at the code, modify it for your own use, but couldn't redistribute it or anything based on it. If someone uses your code in their project, it will be pretty obvious when you look at their code, which would be available for the same reason.

There's no "morality" here. Sure, you don't have to show you code, but then society doesn't have to grant you copyright protection either. Requiring the former in exchange for the latter isn't a completely unreasonable suggestion. Especially given the absolute shit quality of the software industry these days.

No, here is the story that should make you think of skynet:

The Defense Department is working on a self-aware computer.

Remember: No Fate But What We Make. :)

(b) The maximum peak output power of the transmitter shall not exceed 1 Watt. If transmitting antennas of directional gain greater than 6 dBi are used, the power shall be reduced by the amount in dB that the directional gain of the antenna exceeds 6 dBi.

I am just guessing at what they mean in the article by "high-gain". They say they are using a 1 watt bi-directional amp. My personal definition of high gain is a lot higher than 6dBi.

Am I misinterpreting this?

$250 for 500k emails? This morning I was reading about a guy who is selling a million for 20 bucks.

Fun quote:

"I hate spam," he [the spammer, "Steve"] says. "I've gotten death threats. People have threatened to kill my dog. . . . But when you make a thousand bucks in one day, you could care less."

<sarcasm>Hard to argue with that!</sarcasm>

'Though the patents may seem broad, "when you seek a patent, you try to get it as broad as possible," said Walker [PanIP's lawyer]. "You don't want to limit it to just what you think it's going to be used for."'

In other words, the point of filing for patents is to undermine innovation by making them broad enough to cover things you never thought of. To see it put so plainly into words by someone who actually supports this approach makes me sick.

_-_-_

And as reported by the South China Morning Post: Mr Ralsky has said he has lists of 150 million e-mail addresses as a part of his business, so the Verizon case would likely make only a small dent in it.

Professional cat herder: Must be able to crack whip while groveling, talk out of both sides of ass and type with toes. Needed to design, implement and manage a geek union. Organisational skills a plus but not required.

I think this ComputerWorld article sums it up pretty well...

Clearly, they should have used Cobol.NET.

Why are they acting like IE is the "standard" and everything else is "alternative!" Is Ford standard, but Chevrolet alternative?

standard Commonly used or supplied

Huh? Ford and Chevrolet each control about 20% each of the vehicle market. Neither one of them could be considered a standard.

MSIE controls roughly 96% of the browser market. Say what you will about monopolies, bundling, or how evil Microsoft is, but it is the standard.

Well I wouldn't make such conclusions quite yet. Firstly, shortly after Visual Studio.NET (which in essence is .NET) was released, there was a buffer overflow found in, ironically (truly ironically), a security feature intended to thwart buffer overflows. Secondly, there have been 2 service packs already for the .NET Foundation, and on top of that it has been very lightly exercised (extremely few websites use it, and I've yet to see a single commercial or even big shareware or freeware .NET app): Give it time. I will bet you, putting money on the table, that there will be numerous exploits for .NET as time goes by. No malice intended towards Microsoft, but rather it's just the nature of large scale software.

P.S. I love asp.net, Visual Studio.NET, etc, but I also know that Microsoft does not have a stellar security history behind it.

Well, I don't know about .NET or Palladium, but there's some evidence that WinXP hasn't exactly taken off as M$ expected it would, precisely because "there's no compelling reason to replace stuff".

Let's try it linkified: here

this appears to me to be the the best role for a "benevolent virus" (in this case, more of a network scanner/meta-virus, as actual infection is not necessary) - by detecting possible routes of infection/actual infection on a system, and warning that system of possible/actual infections.

This sounds something like CycSecure.

I can't vouch for the efficacy of CycSecure -- I only know what I've read here and a few other places -- but it seems like an free software version of this tool would be a big step towards continuous security for non-expert users.

*charge...not charged. sorry for the error.

Here is a link to a site about CCD's.

To protect against charges of having simply (and illegally) copied IBM's BIOS, Phoenix reverse-engineered it using what's called a "clean room," or "Chinese wall," approach. First, a team of engineers studied the IBM BIOS--about 8KB of code--and described everything it did as completely as possible without using or referencing any actual code. Then Phoenix brought in a second team of programmers who had no prior knowledge of the IBM BIOS and had never seen its code. Working only from the first team's functional specifications, the second team wrote a new BIOS that operated as specified.

1) Get sued for sexual harassment.
2) Cut off internet access to all employees.
3) Pay a fortune for the name "UNIX"
4) Because Linux is "a religion" [...] that "didn't break any new ground" written by "punk young kids"
5) Shuts down all your development teams.
6) Change your mind on Linux 5 years too late and call it Caldera?
7) Umm, rename it to SCO again?
8) ????

I dunno what 9) is, but it sure as hell ain't gonna be "Profit".

Do not take this lightly. It can make citizens into subjects of an already exclusive government. It takes the abuse of power into part of your private domain in ways most people are not prepared to understand. Privacy, as a right, is defined by the U.S. Constitution's explicit freedom from "quartering of soldiers." Email this stuff to the people who you forward jokes to. You need them to know how you feel.

[from the ( Bill of Rights) 3rd. Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America]
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Consider Bruce's analysis:

Pd is inexorably tied up with Digital Rights Management. Your computer will have several partitions, each of which will be able to read and write its own data. There's nothing in Pd that prevents someone else (MPAA, Disney, Microsoft, your boss) from setting up a partition on your computer and putting stuff there that you can't get at. Microsoft has repeatedly said that they are not going to mandate DRM, or try to control DRM systems, but clearly Pd was designed with DRM in mind.

There seem to be good privacy controls, over and above what I would have expected...

When you think about a secure computer, the first question you should ask is: "Secure for whom?" Microsoft has said that Pd allows the computer-owner to prevent others from putting their own secure areas on the computer. But really, what is the likelihood of that really happening? The NSA will be able to buy Pd-enabled computers and secure them from all outside influence. I doubt that you or I could, and still enjoy the richness of the Internet. Microsoft really doesn't care about what you think; they care about what the RIAA and the MPAA think. Microsoft can't afford to have the media companies not make their content available on Microsoft platforms, and they will do what they can to accommodate them. There's often a large gulf between what you can get in theory -- which is what Microsoft is stressing in their Pd discussions -- and what you will be able to have in practice. This is where the primary danger lies.

If you consent to allowing companies to install DRM agents on your computer, you are giving up your legal domain of privacy to them. This is not bad if each program is quarantined off from any others, but what is to keep them from conspiring with each other via RPC across "partner" servers from vendor to vendor to offer you "tighter integration." The programs on your computer even with perfect process separation on your Pd equipped computer are no more trustworthy than the websites from each respective vendor. Worse: you still have to trust Microsoft to implement (instead of pretending to implement) those security functions.

Of course these are servers, not desktop machines. Nevertheless they take a bite out of the MS market.

A related story presented by Computerworld, Microsoft plans security chip for next Windows , raises as many questions as it provides answers.

"The company wants future PCs to contain a security technology called Palladium, and is in discussions with Intel Corp. and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc. to develop the chips..."

According to Mario Juarez, group product manager for the content security business unit at Microsoft; "We're talking here about rearchitecting the PC platform."

Many end-users will surely dislike Palladium's DRM features, but "if you're the Hollywood people, you're thrilled," said Martin Reynolds, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn. (Reynolds was briefed on Palladium by Microsoft.)

When asked whether users would be required to run Windows in order to take advantage of Palladium's features, Juarez replied, "The short answer is 'yeah.'"

In a related note, Microsoft was recently awarded a U.S. patent on a "digital rights management operating system".

A related story presented by Computerworld, Microsoft plans security chip for next Windows , raises as many questions as it provides answers.

"The company wants future PCs to contain a security technology called Palladium, and is in discussions with Intel Corp. and Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Advanced Micro Devices Inc. to develop the chips..."

According to Mario Juarez, group product manager for the content security business unit at Microsoft; "We're talking here about rearchitecting the PC platform."

Many end-users will surely dislike Palladium's DRM features, but "if you're the Hollywood people, you're thrilled," said Martin Reynolds, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn. (Reynolds was briefed on Palladium by Microsoft.)

When asked whether users would be required to run Windows in order to take advantage of Palladium's features, Juarez replied, "The short answer is 'yeah.'"

In a related note, Microsoft was recently awarded a U.S. patent on a "digital rights management operating system".

WASHINGTON -- In a vote with potential national implications, North Dakota residents overwhelmingly agreed yesterday to bar the sale of personal data collected by banks, credit unions and other financial services firms to third parties.

This is the first time that voters in a state have had the chance to toughen privacy protections set in the federal Gramm-Leach-Bliley financial modernization law, which allows financial services firms to freely share information without consumer consent.

Of the approximately 115,000 votes cast in yesterday's referendum, nearly 74% voted to require consumer consent before data is shared. The state elections board offered vote results online.

"This is the beginning of a consumer backlash against the sharing of information," said Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn.

[ ... ]

Privacy advocates say the vote reaffirms opinion polls showing that customers want stronger privacy protections. "It's no longer speculation -- people want opt-in," said Chris Hoofnagle, legislative counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

The vote comes at the same time Congress is considering legislation by U.S. Sen. Ernest "Fritz" Hollings (D-S.C.) that would preempt the ability of states to do what North Dakotan voters did yesterday.

"It's becoming clearer that preemption of state law is an attempt to prevent strong privacy protections," said Hoofnagle.

While clicking "freeplay" yields a bad link, This Link should bring you to a good review of this service...

Cycorp's home page.

OpenCyc is the open source version of the project, due to be released in July 2002.

The artificial intelligence FAQ mentions this project.

An interview with founder Doug Lenat.

A dissenting view from 12 years ago, by Christopher Locke.

Computer world has an article from earlier last month, which has some insight into the issue.