Search

TREND NO. 1 Tightfisted Budgets Loosen a Bit Yet the economy continues to cast a shadow of uncertainty over the best-laid tech spending plans. WHEN Bogdan Butoi-Teodorescu, chief technology officer […]

The IT people at Georgia Institute of Technology weren't exactly prepared two weeks ago when they discovered that a server in their business office had been hacked. That server contained […]

So much for the Golden Age of Consulting. On March 1, Lou Gerstner stepped aside as IBM's CEO. Gerstner, who was once a management consultant, rebuilt IBM by focusing on […]

Readers write - and, as usual, they've got things to say. After the Jan. 7 column in which I suggested that backers of UCITA were like weasels - except that […]

Let's Say you spot a house that's on fire, and you call the fire department. How long should it take the fire department to answer the phone? A few seconds? […]

It's called a proxy hunter. That sounds a little more elegant than 'security hole hunter,' which is really what this kind of software does. Among other things, proxy hunters use […]

Statistic: 18% of teenage girls online believe they could hack into their schools' computers. That's according to a survey of more than 1,000 young women ages 13 to 18 conducted […]

What Strassmann didn't say is this: If your top management wants to dump your IT shop, there's probably not much you can do about it. Strassmann is a hard-numbers guy. […]

Want to take some lessons from Kmart and the biggest retail bankruptcy filing in history last week? Try this: If you cut IT spending in the short run when business […]

Here's how a buffer overflow attack happens: A cracker acquires a popular piece of Internet-related software, such as a Web server or an instant messaging client, and analyzes the code. […]

Your company needs an IT security czar. Reporting security breaches should be mandated by federal law. And Congress should consider making software vendors liable for security holes in their software. […]

Department of Corrections: A few weeks back, I wrote about how virus problems at the U.S. District Court's offices in Miami forced court personnel back into a technological Stone Age […]

PROCESSES and threads have one goal: Getting a computer to do more than one thing at a time. To do that, the processor (or processors) must switch smoothly among several […]

Ready for 2002? You'd better be. Last Monday, the National Bureau of Economic Research officially announced what everybody already knew: The U.S. is in a recession and has been since […]

This Wednesday marks Day 30 since the Nimda.e worm showed up on the Internet. Microsoft and a few of its security cronies would have us believe that 30 days is […]

The big Comdex gadget story this year? No question, it's the Tablet PC. IBM won't be making one, and Michael Dell doesn't think there's a market for them. But Microsoft […]

The trouble with talking about the Microsoft antitrust settlement is that everything keeps changing. No sooner were industry pundits screaming about how the Justice Department's settlement deal is a politically […]

Buy a refrigerator or a dishwasher, and for a small extra charge, it will be delivered, unpacked, installed and made ready to use. Buy a new car, and the seller […]

Fair is fair. I've kicked Gartner analysts for some dumb ideas over the years, so it's only fair to recognize one of them for getting it right. And last week, […]

And now, Nimda. Will these attacks never end? The answer, unfortunately, is no. They won't ever end. The Nimda worm that surfaced last week apparently has nothing to do with […]

Last Tuesday morning, our world changed. Someone had discovered that a transcontinental commercial airliner can be a flying bomb. They used that knowledge to murder thousands of people at the […]

So who won? Who lost? Hewlett-Packard's purchase of Compaq is a gamble - and we won't see the ultimate results for years. A lot can change in the time it […]

Software engineering isn't 'software engineering.' I didn't make that clear three weeks ago in this space, when I wrote that 'software engineering' is to engineering what fantasy baseball is to […]

How many IT people does it take to change a light bulb? The correct answer: IT people shouldn't change light bulbs. Janitors should change light bulbs. Why? Not because IT […]

Has it really been 20 years since the PC arrived? Nope. The IBM Personal Computer didn't actually ship until October 1981, so we're still two months shy of its birthday. […]

Does speed matter anymore? You remember speed. It was one of the mantras of the dot-coms: Business at Internet speed meant everything had to happen fast, fast, fast. It was […]

After years of threats, sniping and dirty tricks, Microsoft is finally bailing out of the Java business. Last week, the company confirmed that it has de-integrated Java from Windows XP […]

Eli Lilly did just about everything it was supposed to do to protect its customers' privacy. When the company set up its Medi-Messenger e-mail service to remind people to take […]

No wonder we have security problems. For decades, we've treated security as an afterthought, an add-on, a kludge. First we design the business system. Then we assemble the technology and […]

For Microsoft, the good news in last week's appeals court decision in U.S. vs. Microsoft was that it won't be broken up anytime soon, and that it will never have […]

So how bad is the Great Dot-Com Die-Off? That's what a reader asked me in March. We all know that lots of Internet-related businesses have shut their doors in the […]

By this time next year, more wireless handheld devices will be connected to the Internet than PCs. That's what the president of mobile phone giant Nokia told the crowd at […]

Looks like it's going to be a long, hot summer. It's not even the end of May, and one analyst outfit is already pronouncing the death of the Web. Let's […]

Does it matter? Does it really matter whether your CIO is one of the five best-paid executives in the company? In last week's Computerworld Cover Story, reporter Kim S. Nash […]

The bumper sticker reads, 'Don't laugh - it's paid for.' The car it's attached to isn't the newest or nicest in the parking lot, but it's good enough for somebody. […]

Remember the Y2k sermon? Back in 1999, the American Bankers Association wrote a sermon for preachers to deliver, telling the people in the pews not to panic over Y2k and […]

Let's talk about implementing XML-based B2B e-commerce. Wait - don't run away! We can talk about something else! Like, say, gorillas, OK? Let's talk about gorillas. Big, hairy, 800-pound gorillas. […]

Got cookies? The U.S. Mint does. So do (or did) NASA, the General Services Administration and the Treasury, Energy, Interior, Education and Transportation departments, according to a preliminary audit released […]

Betrayed - that's the word to describe the IT people at Xerox. When some users violated company policy and installed Microsoft Windows XP beta software on their PCs, the result […]

Dwight Horch was telling me about his project management tool. 'What's happening is that it's being used for projects outside information systems and technology,' he said. 'They're using it in […]

Why do sales guys act that way? You know what I mean: the back-slapping, glad-handing, how's-the-wife-and-kids approach that's been a staple of outside sales forever. Why? Because that's a great […]

When I first went to start-up New.net Inc.'s Web site last week, my browser almost immediately got an error message: 'The host name test.client.new.inc could not be resolved.' Of course […]

It took two tries, but United Air Lines got it right. For about an hour on Jan. 31, a foul-up on United's Web site (www.ual.com) created giveaway prices for tickets […]

Is 85% enough? Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison thinks so. At last week's Oracle AppsWorld conference in Paris, he told the crowd his company's E-Business Suite 'doesn't do everything our customers […]

Dear Jeff Sheahan: Thanks for taking the time to write to Computerworld about my column on Egghead.com's security problems (Frankly Speaking, Jan. 14). As CEO of Egghead.com, you must have […]

Linux is making lots of vendors nervous these days. Some, like the folks at IBM and Hewlett-Packard, are throwing money at Linux - they hope to get in on the […]

Fifty years. Hard to believe, isn't it? Fifty years ago this month, Arthur Andersen consultants decided to create the first computer consulting business, effectively inventing commercial IT. In February 1951, […]

Did cyberthieves actually steal credit card numbers when they broke into Egghead.com's systems last year? Egghead and its hired-gun security firm, Kroll Associates, say no. But in the past week, […]

On the first business day of 2001, venture capitalist Robertson Stephens Inc. downgraded the stocks of a handful of IT-related companies. Within hours, the Nasdaq tumbled. Hey, that'll grab everyone's […]

Ready for 2001? The new year's IT odyssey will be driven by a slowing economy - and that means a bumpy ride, not just for cash-starved dot-coms and revenue-short vendors, […]