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This article examines several distribution software programs developed by Linux. Several factors must be considered in selecting an operating system to be used in any project. Red Hat and several of its derivatives are arguably the best-known distributors. Over the years, Red Hat has evolved into a service-centric organization serving large enterprises. It used to offer a free or retail unsupported version, but in 2003 they split the user-supported community version into its project, Fedora. Fedora serves as a proving ground for new technologies that may eventually be incorporated into Red Hat products. Several other distributors are discussed in this article.

The article evaluates the OS X Panther version 10.3 operating system from Apple Computer Inc. With the 10.3 release of OS X, Apple made the X Window System part of the distribution. Apple made its bones by emphasizing the quality of, and leading the way in developing the modern graphical user interface. In addition, Apple introduced a number of innovations with the Panther release that sound simple but add a significant boost to productivity. For software developers, Apple included with the 10.2 Jaguar release two Integrated Drive Electronics: Project Builder and Interface Builder. In the 10.3 Panther release, Project Builder was redesigned and renamed Xcode. Xcode and Interface Builder are functionally equivalent to the Microsoft Visual Studio tools that developers use to build applications for Windows--but unlike the Microsoft product, Xcode and Interface Builder are included in every copy of the Apple OS X. Within Xcode, users have a choice of building one of four main categories of projects: applications, which may be Objective-C, Java or AppleScript. As with most things Apple, programming is a visual experience. OS X is built on a Unix foundation and as such is more insulated from the numerous security problems that Microsoft users encounter.

Evaluates the M7 Application Assembly Suite, a Web server from M7 Corp. Features of the product; Advantages and disadvantages; Benefits from using the server.

This article discusses the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) vision of International Business Machines (IBM) Corp. IBM's SOA vision encourages its customers to focus on business processes and to structure their information technology assets so that they can be redeployed to meet the changing needs of the enterprise. IBM makes available to its customers two products for addressing these separate, but related needs: the WebSphere Business Integration Server Foundation (BISF) and the WebSphere Application Developer. BISF includes both design and construction tools. For design and construction, the developer uses BISF's WebSphere Application Developer Integration Edition for describing business processes using Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). The business processes created in BISF can be either sequence-based or flow-based. In either case, the developer begins by creating a Web Services Description Language definition for BPEL process using, if desired, an Application Developer wizard. Finally, the processes created with WebSphere Integration Edition are deployed on the WebSphere Application Server. The Application Server may be installed on individual developer desktops to facilitate unit testing without disrupting other developers.

The article focuses on the books that software developers will consult in case of an emergency exit crisis. David Dossot of Agile Partner SA picked Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt saying that besides technical discussions, the book orient programmers to a true ethic of work. Software Development Contributing editor Mike Riley turns to Jim McCarthy's Dynamics of Software Development because the book tells it like it is, not as how it is. For author Jim Highsmith, Jerry Weinberg's The Psychology of Computer Programming is the first to explore the soft science part of software development.

The article relates the responses of people when asked to name three books they would grab from their technical library if their offices got caught on fire. Larry O'Brien, contributing editor of the magazine "Software Development," chose the books "Design Patterns," "Encyclopedia of Software Engineering," and "Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams." Dave Hay, president of Essential Strategies, chose the books "Introduction to Cybernetics," "The Heart of Enterprise," and "Structured Systems Analysis."

The article reflects on the challenges facing the open source software market. It points out the importance of design tools to the success of the open source software community. It discusses the problems facing tool builders. It emphasizes the implications of a disappearing innovation for the industry.

The article considers the GNU Public License or GPL as the most important contribution to the free and open source software (FOSS) movement. Richard Stallman unveiled the second version of GPL, or GPLv2 in 1991. It is the GPL and its derivatives that have made it possible for the FOSS community to successfully implement the software projects that have changed the face of the computing world. GPLv2 has been updated, so it has not remained abreast with rapid advances in hardware and software. The original GPL depends on the Berne Convention, an international agreement on copyright signed in 1886.

This article focuses on technology company Google Inc. The company's real strength comes from its ability to manage and utilize data to drive the targeted advertising that appears with each search result. Google can inflate the salaries of top programmers in Silicon Valley, California, by 25 to 50 percent. According to author Stephen Arnold, Google is using the desktop to establish a beachhead from which it can conquer the enterprise search market. One of its advantages in the market is the Googleplex, which are 15 server farms hosting more than 100,000 individual commodity servers written to function as part of a hot-swappable cluster architecture.

This article reflects on a discussion on the achievements and challenges facing the computer-aided software engineering (CASE) industry. It states that multidimensional tools to represent a software system. It argues that tools from the same vendor frequently do not work together and the problem becomes much worse when the user tries to integrate tools from competing vendors. It suggests that present-day CASE tools are more properly classified as documentation aids rather that development aids.

This article reflects on the collapse of the integrated computer-aided software engineering (iCASE) tool market. It argues that there are as many different development workflow practices as there are organizations and individuals using them to develop software. It relates that the inflexible workflow dictated by iCASE products gave rise to integrated development environments.

This article discusses the increasing use of open source software in the private sector, as of December 2005. Open source software is often first used in the enterprise in low-visibility roles. Cooperation and collaboration are pushing higher education into the forefront of deploying open source-based enterprise applications. SpikeSource has been organized to test and certify Free and Open Source Software. CodeZoo and the Center for Open Source Investigation have joined forces with Intel to establish the Business Readiness Rating model for rating open source software.

Comments on Stevens Institute of Technology professor Larry Bernstein's assertions that the current job crisis is caused by the advent of global software development along with the unwillingness of and difficulty for foreign students to come to the U.S. Reason the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery have opposed the tech industry's lobbying to raise caps on the number of H1-B visas granted annually; Information on the statistics from George Mason University professor Richard Florida; Factors that are working against U.S. technological leadership.

This article focuses on the failure of the software development projects launched by United Airlines and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In June 2005, United Airlines decided to dismantle the $250 million automated baggage-handling system it developed at Denver International Airport. While officials at FBI decided to write-off the Virtual Case File system developed by Science Applications International. Analysis of the software revealed that the architecture of the software is the reason for their failure.

This article deals with the concerns over the decline in basic scientific research and student interest in computer science (CS) in the U.S. An article in the May 2005 Computing Research News, entitled Interest in CS As a Major Drops Among Incoming Freshmen, reports on a recent survey by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. The study found that the percentage of incoming undergraduates indicating that they would major in CS declined by over 60 percent between the fall of 2000 and 2004, and is now 70 percent lower than its peak in the early 1980s. The survey also reported that the number of women choosing to major in CS has dropped to levels not seen since the early 1970s. The plunge in CS majors is matched by a drastic decline in the U.S. government's support for basic research. According to the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation, scientific research and discovery is responsible for the innovation that has created at least half of the economic growth of the country. Benchmarks from the task force indicates that the number of science and engineering papers submitted by U.S. researchers declined by 7 percent from 1988 to 2001.

The article offers views on computer software patent conflicts among computer software companies in the U.S. Attorney Dan Ravicher of the Public Patent Foundation and the Free Software Foundation estimate that more than 50 percent of approximately 300,000 registered software patents contain no innovation and were granted in error by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. But, as with so many other areas of law, member of the U.S. Congress listen to lobbyists with deep campaign contribution pockets. The large firms that open most of the software patents obtain them primarily for defensive purposes: to avoid lengthy litigation, they enter into cross-licensing agreements in which the parties agree not to sue each other over patent infringements. Smaller firms, as well as free and open-source software projects, are left out in the cold, vulnerable attacks of the patent clones. IBM and Sun have begun legal maneuvers in anticipation of a Microsoft assault, IBM contributed 500 patents to the free and open source community, and Sun soon followed with an additional 1,600 patents. Patent warfare, sometimes called patent terrorism, has also spawned patent trolls, mercenary companies that exist only to buy patents and use them to extort settlements from firms unable or unwilling to pay for the legions of attorneys necessary to defend against charges of patent infringement. The intellectual property wars are being fought on several fronts. Open source Development Labs has invested $4 million in the Software Freedom Law Center. These organizations cannot do it alone, they need support.

This article features the Contribute 3.0 Web development tool from Macromedia. The company has used the strengths of its Dreamweaver application to create, in Contribute, a tool that allows developers to put Web site owners in charge of their site's content. Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents can be embedded into Contribute's pages. User-specific roles can be assigned to prevent problems, and basic site-building capabilities are included, allowing control over their sites. Contribute lets developers and users alike focus on what they each do best.

This article discusses the effect of agile methods on a computer programmer's problem-solving ability. Victor Skowronski, a senior engineer with Northrop Grumman Information Technology, suggests that physicist Isaac Newton and religious philosopher Thomas Aquinas would have been considered failures in a collaborative, agile environment. Newton hid his work from others and continually quarreled with his colleagues, while Aquinas famously maintained silence. Yet both men are revered as experts in problem solving. A methodology should take advantage of programmers' strengths and avoid their weaknesses. Skowronski claims that agile methodologists define the best programmers as those who can talk through solutions to problems with their colleagues. In such an environment, agile methods work well when the task is to identify and apply known solutions to the application at hand. The December 2004 issue of IEEE Computer journal included several letters from the agile community about Skowronski's concept. The effective development environment should combine elements that enable different activities throughout the process, said one critic. Another critic suggested that Skowronski had erred in comparing collaborative engineering to solitary research.

This article features the O'Reilly Network, a Web site of Sebastopol, California-based Web developer O'Reilly & Associates. The site provides a free online resource where many of the authors responsible for O'Reilly books contribute, blog and otherwise supply additional content in support of the developer community. One can find free explanations to Java programming questions, insights into the future of the Semantic Web, free support in customizing the OC X features of Apple, tips on how to make Microsoft products do one's bidding, and inspiration in Web developer Tim O'Reilly's support for sensible intellectual property legislation in support of open source software.

This article focuses on electronic voting (e-voting) in the U.S. The Verified Voting Foundation, a nonpartisan watchdog group, has identified more than 30,000 nationwide election incidents from 2004; e-voting problems accounted for approximately 900 of these incidents. Among them were routine problems such as occurred in New Orleans, Philadelphia, and Mercer County, Pennsylvania, where, respectively 42, 28 and 15 machines broke down. Information technology (IT) professionals have extensive, firsthand experience with the difficult task of proving that the systems have not made a mistake. Proving a negative in testing is, for all practical purposes, impossible. All they can do is to identify as many failure scenarios as possible and construct tests for them. And they know that when they build mission-critical systems, they build audit trails, they write transactions to journal logs, and they implement procedures to roll their systems back to a known state when errors do occur--because they know that they will. IT professionals should insist on nothing less for the transaction systems with which they choose their elected officials. For all its problems, each punch-card ballot in the 2000 Florida vote could be examined for voter intent, but with the deployment of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines, they have replaced the famous image of the Florida election judge examining a punched card through a magnifying glass with that of a DRE voting machine manufacturer's representative assuring IT professionals that the machine said it did not make a mistake.

This article presents an update on the global efforts to address the pollution problem created by overflowing computer bit buckets as of April 2005. Online auctioneer eBay has launched ReThink, an initiative to confront the problem of e-waste--including the 133,000 unused or obsolete computers that are replaced everyday in the U.S., many of which might pose environmental hazards when disposed of in landfills. The initiative brings together industry heavy hitters Intel, Apple, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard and IBM within the government, represented by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Postal Service, and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, representing the private nonprofit sector. It was also pleasing to note that BitCycle, a new organization was formed to address the pollution problem. All are aware of the grave problems that occur when computer operators fail to empty their bit buckets in a timely manner. Bit spills, most frequently caused by buffer overflows, are usually more of a nuisance than a hazard in the home environment, but the cumulative effect of millions of overflowing bit buckets--a problem that has grown exponentially as computers have proliferated through the society, as well as through the rest of the world--can no longer be ignored.

This article presents an update on the legislation introduced by U.S. Congressman A. F. Day related to the computer industry in the U.S. as of February 2005. In 2004, Day had introduced a legislation to make Ada the only legal programming language in the U.S. Fortunately for those whose livelihoods depend on maintaining obfuscated C code, the legislation was tabled in committee and never made it to the U.S. House floor. But the indefatigable representative is at it again. This year, Day introduced a bill that would require all computer manufacturers to adhere to a standard end-scheme. Most in the industry are familiar with big- and little-end architectures, in which some vendors place the high-order bytes of words in the left byte and other vendors place them in the right byte. Day was contacted by an irate Unix programmer who took umbrage at the repeated need to use the *conv=swab* option with dd when reading tapes from different vendors. But being an astute politician, Day recognized that favoring either the big- or little-endians was certain political suicide. So he used the time-honored politician's solution: compromise. To satisfy his constituent programmer's request, legislation was drafted to require all computer manufacturers to place the high-order bytes between the two low-order nibbles.

This article discusses the use of the Internet in campaigning and the electoral process in the U.S. in 2004. Among the many fundamental ways in which technology has transformed the U.S. electoral process, two were particularly noteworthy in the 2004 presidential election: the first widespread use of Direct Recording Electronic voting machines and Howard Dean's innovative use of the Internet in building support for his presidential candidacy. As a wartime and incumbent president, George Bush enjoyed a huge advantage over any challenger. But thanks, in part, to the Internet, the results were much closer in 2004: In the key battleground states of Ohio and Florida, John Kerry won a half-million-plus votes more than did Al Gore four years prior. The Internet use by the Democrats was a key factor in those results. Two years before the presidential races began in earnest, Howard Dean's manager Joe Trippi had started reading Joe Armstrong's blog, which among other things, supported Dean's candidacy. The election revealed drawbacks to campaigning through Web blogs. First, the number of people participating creates so much noise that it is difficult to separate the inspired ideas from the merely adequate. Second, if the campaign involves supporters in strategy discussions, opponents are also privy to the campaign's plans, but if supporters are not involved, they feel a lack of ownership. Perhaps involvement in blogs must be translated to volunteer involvement because technology tools are only half of what is needed to win.

This article features legendary software developers Mitch Kapor and Steve Wozniak. Kapor and Wozniak are two dominant names from the halcyon days of the 1980s when the personal computer was born. Kapor made his mark with the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet, and Wozniak with the early apple computers. Both made enough money to ensure they'd never need to work again--yet both are giving back to the world, with not only their fortunes, but their technical expertise. After selling Lotus Development to IBM, Kapor worked as a consultant, developer, software designer, entrepreneur, CEO, angel investor and venture capitalist. Of all these, he most loves designing software, particularly the kinds of applications a person uses in everyday life. Kapor knew that a commercial venture focusing on the desktop couldn't compete with Microsoft, but Linux's success provided him with encouragement to explore the open source alternative. After a few fits and starts, he hired the first employee of the Open Source Applications Foundation in the summer of 2004. Wozniak has followed his philanthropical-cum-technical interests in radically different directions: Notably, he adopted the San Jose, California-area school district for which he set up computer laboratories, local area networks and wide area networks; provided free laptops and Internet access to needy students; and has generally underwritten support for a broad spectrum of projects demonstrating how computers can enhance the educational experience.

This article presents an interview with author Steve McMenamin on structured methods. According to McMenamin, the question of whether or not people use structured methods is not relevant or even interesting. In addition, McMenamin added that structured methods are not required for success and that the issue for him is the presence or absence of method. What interests McMenamin is nothing better than to compare and contrast the Jackson system development to ESA to data-structured system development to Schlaer and Mellor. According to McMenamin the challenge is to persuade people that methods are better than non-methods, better than instinct. The key in large-system development is getting results quickly enough to benefit the business served, and how to maintain acceptable quality levels while improving time performance by 500 or 600 percent. With the system-reconnaissance technique that McMenamin have practiced since 1983, one can achieve a high-level, logical model of an enterprise of almost any size within 1,000 hours. Such a model will not have data-element detail, but it will be adequate for planning, chartering development efforts, beginning detailed requirements analysis, and enabling managers, clients and analysts to decide. Having such a strategic planning model moves projects faster than before.

This article presents the author's opinion on the Google Labs Aptitude Test (GLAT) for computer programmers. The test was replete with questions only a geek could love, such as write a haiku describing possible methods for predicting search traffic seasonality and how many different ways can you color an icosahedron with one of the three colors on each face? Even the spaces provided for entering identifying information were not immune from the oddball approach. From the perspective, the test probably achieved its goal. But, I wondered, what if it were for real? What if Google was, in fact, hiring based on the test? Robert L. Glass, president of Computing Trends, gave me a historical perspective on tests like the GLAT. About 30 years ago, he recalled, International Business Machines Corp. constructed a Programmer Aptitude Test (PAT) that it intended to use for hiring programmers. But no correlation between PAT scores and on-the-job performance was found, nor was any correlation between computer sciences course grades and on-the-job performance. The great programmers among us have a rare combination of skills that is not simply evident from a few simple tests. Tests are also useless at finding programmers who have the social skills to work well as a part of team.

This article discusses the principle of the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act (IICA) of 2004 and how it can affect fair use of copyrighted material in the U.S. IICA is a controversial bill that is in its fifth rewrite, as of December 1, 2004. Along with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA), the so-called Induce Act circumvents the fair use argument for copyrighted material by making it a federal offense to intentionally induce someone to infringe upon the rights of a copyright holder, regardless of whether the end user of the technology is legally entitled to use it. This legislation is the latest battle in a war between consumers and content owners over fair use of copyrighted materials. It is worth noting that artists and other creators of copyrighted works are often portrayed as victimized parties, a convenient PR fiction for the copyright holders. The DCMA has shifted the balance of power to the copyright holders, and also made them the copyright cops. The Induce Act goes further, by creating a subjective test of which Rep. Rick Boucher says that the effect on device manufacturers would appear to be self-evident. They could not bring new multipurpose devices to market without facing the threat of crippling litigation.

This article focuses on Niklaus Wirth's development of Oberon in Zurich, Switzerland. According to Wirth, Oberon evolved from a project whose goal was the design of a modern, flexible and efficient operating system (OS) for a single-user workstation. The OS was initially designed in Modula-2, but Wirth felt that because Modula-2 allowed the use of variant record types, garbage collection would be difficult. Consequently he decided to design a new language that would provide other methods for extending record types. Wirth also wished to experiment with a minimalist approach to language design that emphasized mathematical purity. As a result, Oberon evolved from Modula-2 chiefly by subtracting features from Modula-2, although some new features were added. Some of the subtracted features include variant records, opaque data types, enumeration types, subrange types, reserved words CARDINAL and WITH, local modules. Although Oberon may not reach the same levels of commercial acceptance as Wirth's Pascal and Modula-2, it has already influenced designers of subsequent languages. Modula-3 was designed to provide OO extensions to Modula-2 as well as support for threads, exceptions and garbage collection.

This article discusses changes in software copyrights. As of November 2004, a declining number of large corporations have created a neo-feudal system to control IP. Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of culture and communication at New York University, explains in the book, Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity, that U.S. copyright law reflected the founders' belief in the importance of the public sphere--the commons where ideas can be shared and refined. IP is distinct from real property because it is not naturally scarce. The fundamental purpose of IP law is to create artificial scarcity, which exists to encourage the investment of time and money in works that might not otherwise find adequate reward in a completely free market. However, the Internet's growth broke down the economic and technical barriers to distribution that had limited wholesale copyright violation and removed the element of scarcity. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1988 (DMCA) destroyed the historical balance between the rights of the public and the rights of the copyright holder. The DMCA also went far beyond traditional copyright protection in that it protected not only the expression of the idea, but the technology used to express that idea.

This article discusses the vast benefits in fostering an emphasis on trustworthy software technology. In a world where computing is already an important part of many people's lives, it is needed to know who is accountable when software fails. That is why computer scientists like Larry Bernstein of New Jersey's Stevens Institute of Technology exert so much effort to make software trustworthiness the next major focus for academia and industry, for national security reasons, as well as to ensure that the U.S. software industry maintains its leadership. Seeing vast benefits in fostering an emphasis on trustworthy software technology, Bernstein suggests that doing so can spark another round of U.S. software innovation that will stifle the wholesale outsourcing of the industry. U.S. software vendors lead in innovation, but the world is catching up. It is time to launch an assault on another front, and Bernstein argues that trustworthiness is that front. But, he says, companies will only act to assure trustworthiness if there are economic consequences of not doing so. Trustworthy computing has also become a concern of the U.S. Congress. In testimony before the House Committee on Government Reform, a computer scientist pointed out that software dependability is critical for systems safety, for management of sensitive records, and for critical infrastructure.

This article discusses an argument raised by Cass R. Sunstein in the book, Why Societies Need Dissent, which can be applied to technology and business decision-making as to that in the political and legal spheres. Sunstein's thesis states that organizations and nations are more likely to prosper if they welcome dissent and promote openness. Working against these sentiments are the three forces of conformity, social cascades and group polarization, interrelated forces that conspire to discourage sharing one's knowledge with others. Thus, the most confident and firm individuals in the group exert disproportionate influence because people are extremely vulnerable to the unanimous views of others. Indeed, Sunstein declares, dissenters benefit others more than themselves, and conformists benefit themselves, but often at the expense of optimal decision-making. At the managerial level, decision-making can override the goal of sharing information with a group. Social cascades can be summarized as large-scale social movements in which many people end up thinking or doing something because of the beliefs or actions of few early movers who greatly influence those who follow. Finally, group polarization is seldom found in the information technology sector. In brief, it can be described as the tendency of social groups to disregard the center, and take on extreme positions.

The article examines the book "Globalization and a High-Tech Economy: California, the United States and Beyond," by Ashok Bardhan. Bardhan defines globalization as the institutional developments that allow international transfers of information, people, goods and services to be carried out rapidly and at low cost. This definition is narrower than both the popular global village and statistical analyses of world trade. Bardhan and his colleagues discuss the effects of globalization on both high-tech manufacturing and high-tech services. Bardhan and his colleagues have also determined that companies do not start sending jobs offshore until there is a recession or their industry encounters troubled times. Bardhan and his colleagues offer several suggestions for better policy-making in any state with a significant base of high technology.

A new blog application server uses Rich Site Summary (RSS) for more complex, context-aware responsibilities. There are many communication methods that enable distributed team members to collaborate as there are distributed teams. E-mail, listserv mailing lists, wikis, bulletin board software, blogs, CVS comment headers are among the methods. E-mail is the most used solution, but its ubiquity brings the seeds of its potential destruction, which is spam. The major problem with e-mail, however, is that control lies in the hands of those who send the messages, not the recipients. One promising solution is evolving out of blogging, RSS, which allows a user to decide what information and when the information will be received. RSS, is an XML standard first developed to make it easier for those who read blogs to use aggregators of client blog-entry readers, by delivering feeds when requested from individual blogs' servers to the aggregators on the client machines. The feeds consist of a headline and a summary of a blog entry. Program developers, Andy Seidl and Bill French saw an opportunity to enhance RSS for more complex organizational responsibilities and founded MyST Technology Partners. Their product MySmartChannels is a blog application server built on Web services architecture.

This article comments on several aspects of the PowerPoint program. In the book The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, Edward Tufte takes aim at corporate slide presentations, such as a system architect might use in explaining a project to an offshore development crew. He asserts that the cognitive style of the typical PowerPoint presentation suffers from a foreshortening of evidence and thought, low spatial resolution, a hierarchical single-path structure as the model for organizing every type of content, breaking up narrative and data into slides and minimal fragments, rapid temporal sequencing of thin information rather than focused spatial analysis. At the center of Tufte's brief is his analysis of a series of National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) slides that discussed possible debris damage to the space shuttle Columbia's left wing during its last flight. The slide from Boeing engineers were used by NASA engineering management in making the fateful decision that Columbia could withstand the heat of re-entry despite its missing tiles. The slides suffer from standard PowerPoint format problems. Unfortunately, PowerPoint discourages employing aids to enhance redundancy and contextual understanding.

This article focuses on the failure of the Diebold Direct Recording Electronic voting machines during the 2002 midterm Georgia elections. When the Georgia electronic votes were tallied, Democrats were suspicious of the disparity between pre-election polls and the Direct Recording Electronic-reported results. Programmer Roxanne Gekot examined Diebold's Direct Recording Electronic source code and discovered a poorly engineered system running on Microsoft Access and riddled with security holes. In the ensuing weeks, Diebold internal memos, leaked to the Internet, allegedly revealed discussions among the company's engineers about security holes in their systems and how to fake compliance with state certification procedures. Focusing on technical issues, software engineers face major problems with Direct Recording Electronic voting machines, most resolving around verification. The Diebold Direct Recording Electronic voting machines employed in Georgia use a form of the Microsoft Windows operating system which is the most widely hacked software in the world. To prevent voting machine failures, it is important to equip existing digital voting stations with a paper-based, voter-verifiable audit trail.

Focuses on the lawsuit filed by the SCO Group against former U.S. Vice President Al Gore for his alleged bad-faith effort to interfere with the company's rights with respect to the Internet. Details of the allegations of the company against Gore; Demands in the lawsuit; Comment from A. F. Day, Gore's former Chief of Staff about the allegations.

Discusses the impact of offshore outsourcing and mechanical automation on information technology professionals and the U.S. economy. Background on a decline in manufacturing employment in several countries; Information on a decrease in the number of computer programmers from 2000 to 2003; Details of a strategy for improving a company's productivity.

Comments on the lawsuit filed by Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) against IBM claiming that much of Linux source code contains portions lifted from Santa Cruz's proprietary Unix code. Contingency partnership between SCO and legal superstar David Boies; Selling price of SCO stocks before the lawsuit; Number of shares issued by SCO when the stock has gone high.

Focuses on the term naming standards used in the IT industry. Difficulties posted by words with multiple meanings to the IT and business industry; Information on the book "Principles of the Business Rule Approach."

Explains the concept of utility publishing (UP) used in technology-related book rental business. Comparison between utility computing and outsourcing; Content of the O'Reilly & Associates' Safari Tech Books Online service; Advantages of the Safari service.

Deals with the emerging political battle over the issue of using Extensible Markup Language (XML) to facilitate text-to-Braille translation in the U.S. Number of visually impaired Americans; Opportunity presented by the advent of XML in automating the production of books in Braille formats; Obstacles facing blind and dyslexic people in getting access to E-books.

Comments on the practice of the U.S. high technology industry of outsourcing projects to offshore contractors. Predicted increase in offshore outsourcing; Computer software companies that outsource their software development projects offshore.

Focuses on the '2003 Computer-aided Software Engineering Expo' in the U.S. Highlights of the presentations at the exhibition.

Presents answers to questions posed to Phillip Windley, former executive of Excite@Home, based on excerpts from his personal Weblog. Comments on the contents of the Utah.gov Web site; Opinion on the leadership capacity of executives in the computer software development industry; Remarks on the working conditions of employees in information technology.

Comments on several computer software books published by O'Reilly. Information on the book 'Unix Power Tools,' edited by Jerry Peek; Details of a series of books on computer hacking; Support of O'Reilly for the open-source movement.

Relates views on how software developers affect the dynamics of technology adoption. Risks taken by innovators; Habits of early adopters; Description of the evaluation and decision making process.

Presents information on the recipients of the 2003 'Software Development,' Jolt Productivity Award in the Web services tools category. BEA WebLogic Workshop from BEA Systems Inc.; SOAPScope from Mindreef; SOAPtest from Parasoft Corp.

Presents information on the recipients of the 2003 'Software Development,' Jolt Productivity Awards in the design and analysis tools category. Together WebSphere Studio Edition from Borland International Inc.; Argo/UML from Argouml.tigris.org; Codagen Architect from Codagen.

Examines the freelance or free-agent issue in the IT market. Emergence of the free agency trend; Free agency evangelism in the business journalism sector; Challenges facing free agents in the IT labor market; Key to the success of IT free agent.

Discusses the decision of Utah Governor Michael Leavitt to hire former Excite executive Philip Windley to assume chief information officer position at the state. Goal of the state for its information technology departments; Career of Windley at Excite; Controversy involved in the hiring of Windley; Opposition of state employees to the staff employed by Windley.