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Think this is the story you're talking about:

http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2005/052305schwartau.html?page=1

Sadly the blog is now empty (the story is about 3 years old, so probably inactivity).

What appears to be the conclusion can be seen at:

http://www.networkworld.com/best/2006/022706bestbreaker-schwartau.html?page=1

Posting anon to not Karma Whore(TM)

Think this is the story you're talking about:

http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2005/052305schwartau.html?page=1

Sadly the blog is now empty (the story is about 3 years old, so probably inactivity).

What appears to be the conclusion can be seen at:

http://www.networkworld.com/best/2006/022706bestbreaker-schwartau.html?page=1

Posting anon to not Karma Whore(TM)

Network World mentioned how this aspect of the law could cause problems for software licensing if Blizzard was successful in its lawsuit:

http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2008/050808backspin.html

The whole thing initially struck me as too unreal to take seriously but I reconsidered after remembering that lawyers are involved.

Oh please. This is why I love Slashdot. I'm as big of a MS hater as the next guy, but those who ignore MS's progress from the Blaster days are just spewing FUD. A default Windows SP2 installation, with non-executable buffers (DEP) left enabled for Core windows services, running on supporting hardware will not get owned by just sitting on an infected network. I challenge any Slashdoter who thinks otherwise to prove it. Of course, when people start browsing porn sites with the default browser things get tricky, but that's no longer a remote, automated attack.
TFA counts *ALL* forms of attack. Even scans for obscure webserver or game vulnerabilities, Blaster type scans and ssh brute force attempts. I fail to see how these "attacks" can have any impact on a computer running a fresh install of a recent version of Windows like XP SP2, SP3 or Vista.
You can argue about security track-record all you like, and talk about why Windows is not secure by design, and how it should not be used for life support systems and ATMs, and I would agree. But this is getting ridiculous.

More info on Hellboy can be seen here.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0151804/quotes

Peter Gibbons: Let me ask you something. When you come in on Monday, and you're not feelin' real well, does anyone ever say to you, 'Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays'?
Lawrence: No. No, man. Shit, no, man. I believe you'd get your ass kicked sayin' something like that, man.

I feel the same way about this

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/29791

Here's me shouting to no one in particular the other morning: "Hey, look, Brad's gotta do the Laptop Drive of Shame." Gales of laughter ensue.

Paul McNamara, you live in a country with the Second Amendment and you work in IT where there are a lot of 'ticking time bomb' types. Maybe a little tact might be a good idea.

Please note: that bls statistic only refers to the demand side of the equation. To see the whole picture, you also have to consider the supply side. India has 4X the US population, and India alone is cranking out 495,000 BSCS graduates every year.

Furthermore, according the BLS:

"As with other information technology jobs, outsourcing of software development to other countries may temper somewhat employment growth of computer software engineers. Firms may look to cut costs by shifting operations to foreign countries with lower prevailing wages and highly educated workers."

Also, I have to wonder where the BLS gets it's information:

"According to Robert Half Technology, starting salaries for software engineers in software development ranged from $66,500 to $99,750 in 2007. For network engineers, starting salaries ranged from $65,750 to $90,250."

Robert Half! Asking Robert Half if it's a good time to go into IT is like asking Century 21 if it's a good to sell your home.

http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos267.htm

Here are some more numbers:

"H-1B Visa Numbers: No Relationship with Economic Need"

According to a new study from the Center for Immigration Studies: the number of H-1B visas approved in the computers and engineering fields greatly exceeds any reasonable number reflected by economic demand.

http://www.cis.org/node/222

"High Tech Industry Laying Off American Workers While Seeking Huge Increase in Guest Workers"

"Currently, the Department of Labor estimates that there are about 656,000 unemployed IT workers in the U.S. In addition, the slowing economy has led to a loss of jobs across the board including in IT. The Denver-based Rocky Mountain News reports that Colorado -- the state with the third highest concentration of IT workers -- has lost 47,200 technology jobs since 2001."

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_may08nl02

Gains in US high tech employment more than offset by off-shore worker visas

"According to the AeA Cyberstates yearly reports, "High Tech" employment experienced job losses of 945,000 in the 2001 recession. Since this drop in employment, the "High Tech" sector has recovered about 300,000 jobs, but during the period in question, a probable 669,681 H-1B and L-1 computer-related workers were added to the workforce."

http://tinyurl.com/3pj2c3

IT job security plummets five times faster than nationwide average

"Job security for IT professionals plummeted more than 10% from January to February of this year, far surpassing the average job security declines seen nationwide in a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns."

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/033108ed1.html

Studies Indicate IT Labor Shortage is a Myth

"These studies done at Duke aren't alone in their assessment that there is in fact no skills shortage. They're backed up by other studies conducted by RAND Corporation, The Urban Institute and Stanford University, among others, all of which settle upon the same conclusion: There is no shortage of educated IT workers."

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1081923#PaperDownload

This according to a well researched article at baselinemag.com:

http://tinyurl.com/yoy2rw

Arrr, laddie, I've seen error messages the size of great whites! Swallow a man whole, they will!

CAN
YOU
STAND
THE
HORROR!!!

But yeah, the most wacked out ginoruous displays in Times Square are at the end of the day just great big monitors. Running Windows 2000.

Curt A. Monash, Ph.D. President, Monash Research curtmonash@nospam.com (978) 555-1212 CurtMonash on AIM and Twitter Backups: curtmonash@nospam2.com, (978) 555-1213 Main website: http://www.monash.com/ Guide to our research: http://www.monash.com/blogs.html Required reading if you want to pitch me: http://www.strategicmessaging.com/how-to-pitch-me/2008/05/16/ New Network World blog: http://www.networkworld.com/community/monash

and yet he still fell victim. Who knows, it may be the opposite strategy is better.

"I don't see any "low sinking" about it. First of all, the money Gates is so charitably donating, is money he acquired from an illegal monopoly, so it is reasonable to follow where it is going."

This is not correct really, the gates foundation recieves most of it's money from private donations. http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/062606-gates-foundation-receives-307-billion.html/

Nuh-uh! AIM has supported that for some time now.

Note how the url for the "print" version of the page includes the full file system path location of the html. http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/htdocs/news/2008/070108-mcafee-spam-experiment.html&pagename=/news/2008/070108-mcafee-spam-experiment.html&pageurl=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/070108-mcafee-spam-experiment.html&site=security This, on the Network World SECURITY page.

...or IPV6 vs IPV4...

Keep in mind that MS Windows (all versions) is the main barrier holding back IPv6. Other systems support IPv6 just fine.

Linspire had a marketing department.

Which is why the OEM Linspire PC could be purchased off the shelf at Walmart - and why the Lindows-Windows dust-up was worth a few thousand posts to Slashdot.

AOL reached about thirty million U.S. households at its peak.

In nine million homes it is still there. AOL rate increase maybe not as dumb as it look [June 30]

AOL's legacy includes the MMORPG. Neverwinter Nights. Instant Messaging. The complexities of the BBS, IRC and USENET client disappear.

In time, an entire geek-oriented culture of the "Net" begins to disappear:

Internet Evolution: Things Change

In the realm of the OS, Linspire dared to say that this was not a bad thing.

In mid-2008 Linux has 0.68% of the desktop market - and growth is barely perceptible. The Vista Premium laptop at Walmart.com starts at $500. The Duo Core AMD with 3 GB RAM at $600.

OLPC couldn't hold the line against Windows on the XO.

Windows on the Netbook is a reality.

This has to sting the geek when the story comes out as a Microsoft press release:

"The Asus Eee PC has been and continues to be a very successful product for Cellnet," said Julian Phua, general manager of Cellnet Group Ltd. "The feedback from our customers in retail and the reseller channel is that they overwhelmingly prefer to sell the Eee PC running with Windows. To move our existing Linux inventory, we are now offering our channel the option of purchasing Windows XP with their Eee units so they can provide a compelling offering for customers."

Following Success of Windows on Netbooks, Microsoft Extends Windows Offering to Nettop Devices [June 3]

Isn't a dual-WAN router the simplest/cheapest method, whatever you are planning to put downstream of it? http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2004/0913rev.html

So the Chinese are saying today that the original story, in the Shanghai Securities News wasn't true. I'm not sure I believe the news report or the government. Does the Chinese government care about creating an open, free economy? It might want to start by weeding out all the counterfeiting going on under its nose. But, it's a little distracted too busy censoring the Internet ...

The title says: "'Intrepid' Supercomputer Fastest In the World" for open science while the article says "IBM's Blue Gene/P, known as 'Intrepid', is located at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility and is also ranked third fastest overall." There needs to be some clarification. Roadrunner is considered the fastest in the world and is also built for the DOE. I'm guessing that Roadrunner is used exclusively by Los Alamos and is not available for open science while Intrepid is.

When are we going to end these interconnect wars by going optical or optical with power for both peripherals and internal busses? Last I saw http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25514 IBM was working on 8 tera bits per second. I'm sure this is more than what is currently needed but I'd hate to pull a Gates and drastically underestimate needs.

This issue has been running for a long time. In particular the different attitudes to the privacy of individuals' data in the US and the EU has blocked a lot of data being transferred from the EU to the US. This isn't the Patriot Act - the linked article dates back to before that was enacted. As an EU citizen I like it that my personal data can't just be bundled up and sold on from one company to another without my permission.

However, there are provisions under the Safe Harbour rules that allow data to be transferred to the US, so this shouldn't be a complete block to development or outsourcing. As long as companies, and government agencies, agree to abide by the rules. If they don't want to, that's their choice.

Funny that he say that, today in the EusecWest security conference, a security researcher is presenting a generic rootkit that works in nearly all the cisco routers.
Is a pretty shocking piece of information in that he can pwn a huge piece of the internet infrastructure, and now the supply chain of routers and network appliances must be strictly controlled.
I don't know wy nobody submitted it to front page yet.

TFA links here, which is presumably a podcast of some Lotus Notes dude (insert obligatory Notes joke here) pushing the idea that "that collaboration tools such as e-mail, telephones and desktops will die at the hands of unified communications."

So, what's the angle? They're trying to tell us that since a whopping 20% of society has never used email, we should all sell our computers and buy a LotusBerry(tm)?

Pfffffffft.

So, I'm curious, you say that you foresee the end of the US IT job market. Why?

Aggressive off-shoring. Jobs are being sent off-shore like mad, and off-shore workers are being brought in to do whatever jobs are remaining.

There will still be some IT jobs in the USA, of course. Some US citizens will still be hired. But the supply/demand ratio will make IT about the worst field you can enter.

What is happening to IT now is something like what happened to auto and steal workers in the 1980s. Except the assembly line workers did have to invest in specialized training, or fight to get specialized experience.

Don't take my word for it, read the headlines:

High Tech Industry Laying Off American Workers While Seeking Huge Increase in Guest Workers
> "Currently, the Department of Labor estimates that there are about 656,000 unemployed IT workers in the U.S. In addition, the slowing economy has led to a loss of jobs across the board including in IT. The Denver-based Rocky Mountain News reports that Colorado -- the state with the third highest concentration of IT workers -- has lost 47,200 technology jobs since 2001."

http://www.fairus.org/site/PageServer?pagename=research_may08nl02

Gains in US high tech employment more than offset by off-shore worker visas"
> "According to the AeA Cyberstates yearly reports, "High Tech" employment experienced job losses of 945,000 in the 2001 recession. Since this drop in employment, the "High Tech" sector has recovered about 300,000 jobs, but during the period in question, a probable 669,681 H-1B and L-1 computer-related workers were added to the workforce."

http://tinyurl.com/3pj2c3

IT job security plummets five times faster than nationwide average
> "Job security for IT professionals plummeted more than 10% from January to February of this year, far surpassing the average job security declines seen nationwide in a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns."

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/033108ed1.html

Take a look at the forums on dice - they are filled with people who have a degree, but can not get a job. Here are some examples:

"I graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) back in January 2005. After I graduated, I was unable to find a job . . . so in order to pay bills and student loans, I had to get a temp job doing customer service, making $12 an hour"

http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=6562&tstart=0

"I have bachelors degree in computer science. I have 10yrs of experience in software and 5yrs in .net. But now i have been laid of and out of job for past 4 months."

http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=7151&tstart=0

"I am a cliche . . . I am 24 year old, B.Sc. Computer Science grad from an above average state school, and I'm unemployed."

http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=4896&start=0&tstart=0

"I graduated with a B.S in Computer Science last year May 2007. Though after applying to hundreds of places I've only gotten a handful of interviews and no IT job as of yet! All my other friends who majored in business or accounting managed to get jobs fairly easily."

http://seeker.dice.com/olc/thread.jspa?threadID=6875&tstart=0

"Soooo. I graduate May of 07, with a 3.3 and a BSIT but no experience in IT Security . . . And I am $#*7 out of luck"

They are already doing it. Microsoft has been feeding the government with information obtained when you let the MS Malicious Software Removal tool analyze your computer.

Here is one article about it:
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/042908-microsoft-botnet-hunting-tool-helps-bust.html

It isn't such a big leap of faith to think that the next step might be to secretly let the government install control software, too. Only to be used for "good" purposes, of course.

There actually was some hullaballoo about this a while ago. Whatever became of it, I don't know, but the GP isn't exactly making baseless remarks, or rather, their baseless remarks are at least based on other baseless remarks from a while ago:

Network World

C|Net

From what I can find, it seems like it was mostly just unsubstantiated paranoia. I'm no expert, but I did see a Holiday Inn Express commercial once.

Hopefully some new alternatives to fiber optics and present day routers which would remove bottlenecks for faster video and so we don't have to order the evil cable tv.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/12501

http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2913761,00.html

Maybe he's one of the lucky 12% ...

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/041608-survey-12-percent-of-consumers.html?t51hb/

... or an innocent victim, perhaps?

> What is needed to make your case is a statistical analysis that says C.S. majors earn less and are unable to find work.

Actually no, becuase that was not my case. A BSCS may be employable, but he or she would have been better off to have chosen a different major.

BSCSs may earn more than IT workers who have no degrees, in some cases. But, often there is little, in any, difference. Employers want experience, not degrees, look at the job ads.

Unlike doctors, lawyers, engineers, CPAs, nurses, or many other professions; a BSCS is not a hard requirement for most IT jobs. The degree has very little value relative to it's cost and difficulty. Add that to the aggressive offshoring of IT professionals, and it seems to me that a students time, effort, and money, would be better spent elsewhere.

And here is some data to back that up:

> "According to the AeA Cyberstates yearly reports, "High Tech" employment experienced job losses of 945,000 in the 2001 recession. Since this drop in employment, the "High Tech" sector has recovered about *300,000* jobs, but during the period in question, a probable *669,681* H-1B and L-1 computer-related workers were added to the workforce."

http://tinyurl.com/3pj2c3

> "Job security for IT professionals plummeted more than 10% from January to February of this year, far surpassing the average job security declines seen nationwide in a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns."

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/033108ed1.html

> "Gates claims that Microsoft needs more H-1b to hire new foreign graduates. But there are many U.S. graduates with several years of experience trying to find work at Microsoft and other employers - but Gates does not open these "entry level" positions to these Americans. Why? Experienced Americans are only considered for the positions that require an arbitrary 3 to 7 years of experience in several specific skills - then the Americans are summarily rejected for not meeting all of those arbitrary qualifications."

http://tinyurl.com/358alw

> "Dell Job Cuts to Top 8,800 as U.S. Spending Slows"
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aEO1GX_CC.8U&refer=us

> "Motorola to lay off 2,600 workers"
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-motorola-8k-jobcuts-motapr04,0,4870738.story

> "Chrysler Slashing Tech Jobs - The latest cutbacks affect 400 technology workers"
http://www.thecarconnection.com/blog/?p=1095

> "AMD axes 10% of its staff"
http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/36823/167/

> "Yahoo Profits Slip; To Cut 1,000 Jobs"
http://blog.wired.com/business/2008/01/yahoo-profits-s.html

> "Google lays off about 300 at DoubleClick"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/03/BUA2VUNAO.DTL&tsp=1

> "EBay Cuts 125 Jobs in Europe, North America"
http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080320/ebay_jobs.html?.v=4

> "CNET to Lay Off 120"
http://www.redherring.com/Home/24032

> "At least 160 employees at CBS Corp. . . were let go"
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-stations9apr09,1,7495348.story

> Applied

Now why would anyone be concerned about ISPs meddling with their traffic? University of Washington researchers are set to release a paper today that says one percent of the Web pages being delivered on the Internet are being changed along the way... http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/041608-isps-meddled-with-their-customers.html

The moral: pr0n sites are safer!! Remember this when you surf.

They were found GUILTY.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2000/0403msverdict.html

Antitrust falls under criminal law. This was the U.S. Department of Justice prosecuting Microsoft for their crimes in response to complaints filed by numerous companies.

Their punishment, or sentencing, was altered where they were initially to be split up into separate competing units. But because the judge in the case was deemed "too judgemental" he was replaced with a more sympathetic judge who, while he could not overturn the verdict, was able to impose an extremely light sentence with conditions of "oversight" which has, I might add, have been violated numerous times.

So yes, I just provided documentation in the form of a news story and it is a matter of public record if you seek to read the actual details. I'm pretty sure there are copies available at Groklaw.

'They sent the workers an e-mail about a plan to cut their benefits and included a link to a Web site where they could find out more'

'When employees clicked on the link, they were directed to a Web server set up by Winkler and his team. The employees' machines displayed an error message, but the server downloaded malware that enabled the team to take command of the machines.

"Then we had full system control," Winkler says.

"It was effective within minutes."'

Any guess as to which Operating System this malware runs on ..

If you are reporting on security topics you should really make sure your web app is secure.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/040908-rsa-hack-power-grid.html?page=2-XSSHERE-

-EvilPacket

There is also this:

> "Job security for IT professionals plummeted more than 10% from January to February of this year, far surpassing the average job security declines seen nationwide in a rigorous analysis of U.S. employment patterns."

http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/edu/2008/033108ed1.html

And this:

> WSJ: "Government Quietly Changes Rules on Foreign Tech Workers"

> On Friday, DHS issued a press release saying that businesses could now hire foreign students who attended American schools for 29 months without obtaining an H-1B visa,

http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/04/07/government-quietly-changes-rules-on-foreign-tech-workers/?mod=WSJBlog#comment-18914

Isn't that similar to the posting about Berkley's joke recommender posting from the other day? Rate jokes and it then suggests ones you should like. I tried it and I don't know if the pool from which the jokes are pulled is shallow, but the ones it returned after I finished "calibrating" it were terrible and not along the lines of what I would have assumed the system thought I would think were funny.

IBM beat Sun at the press release game. http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25514 from 2-22-2008, has a good explanation of the benefits of optical. The main things that I see you gain are:
1. Tremendous increases in bandwidth (chip to chip, bus, and peripherals)
2. Less dependance on physical layout to handle high "clocking" rates (busses become like transmission lines at today's clock rates)
3. Independence from chip voltage requirements (you no longer have to have the electronics necessary to drive the bus at a different voltage level than what is optimal for chip low-power consumption)
4. Circuits are electrically isolated (fewer cascade failures of chips/boards/computers/etc due to power/lightning/static strikes. Easier to integrate different chip technologies like CMOS, TTL, etc.)
5. Ease of interfacing to pure-optical "special purpose" components (some operations are almost instantaneous in the frequency domain. A Fast Fourier Transform is a good example. A device as simple as a prism does the "calculations" almost instantly.)
6. No crosstalk and no stray EMF (for TEMPEST types out there)
7. Unaffected by nearby high voltages or currents
There are many more advantages that I, as a EE, love. I, personally, have been waiting for this transition to optical for over 30 years. Now if we can make that transition to optical memory (holographic perhaps), and eliminate the keyboard -- or better yet, all the mechanical parts... (sorry, all you MEs!) Photonics seems to be the future for awhile anyway. ;)

Without all of the ads. Won't someone please think of my eyes?

Or, you know, maybe education doesn't work.

And yes, it is faster and has less crashes and uses less memory. Did you think that was a binary choice?

Yeah, cause no one uses FTP anymore, right?

I hate multi-page splits for more ad space. http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/htdocs/news/2008/030708-vegas-insider.html&pagename=/news/2008/030708-vegas-insider.html&pageurl=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/030708-vegas-insider.html&site=software

Print copy.

Print version of non-/.'ed article: http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi?pagetosend=/export/home/httpd/htdocs/news/2008/030708-vegas-insider.html&pagename=/news/2008/030708-vegas-insider.html&pageurl=http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/030708-vegas-insider.html&site=software

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/030708-vegas-insider.html?page=3

/getting sick of paging through 5 pages of a single page article. If I ever start an online mag, I'm going present one sentence per page just for fun.

Network World has the article as well, since the poor .au site has just developed emotional issues from the stampede of slashdotters.

Link

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/030708-vegas-insider.html?fsrc=rss-security

You're the exact type of person who will be the very first to blame IT for the hack/breach that'll happen if they install your unapproved software, or loosen up security because it interferes with your convenience.

We in IT security (I'm a CISSP) know you very well, in fact your type (over-demanding internal users) poses the worst security threats above and beyond external threats and malware. You are also "Cleopatra" -- Queen of Denial.

"It isn't that hard to make more people. In fact its kind of fun.

yeah except the 9 months of pregnancy and the several years of training required before you can strap a bomb to it and have it crawl somewhere to blow up.

I'd be willing to guess it's probably more efficient to use robots. Much cheaper and less waiting. Even if you could recruit someone willing to kill themselves what's the cost of recruiters these days? Better to just pay chinese children to build cheap robots, even the article says "that a small GPS guided drone with autopilot could be made for about $200." That's a hellva deal compared to recruiters or birthing your own suicide bombers.

It was in the firehose entry...why the editors removed that bit of info is not clear:

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25435

While network connectivity may be close to ubiquitous in some places, network reliability is anything but. The outage of Amazon S3 should be a wakeup call to the "cloud computing" crowd. Networks are flakey. Wireless networks very flakey.

Occasionally connected apps like Air could provide backup for data in the same way that UPS provides backup for power. I've lost count of the number of times I've gone 20+ form fields into some web app that died. Temporary local storage could fix that.