Opinion: Why CIOs Should Pay Attention to Hewlett-Packard
Click title to read rest of article at BaselineMag.com…
Paul A. Strassmann
July 5, 2007
For nearly 60 years, IBM was considered the champion of the information-technology industry. No other company, including Microsoft, approached IBM’s dominance as measured by revenue, personnel and assets.
The designation of No. 1 I.T. vendor now belongs to Hewlett-Packard, which has seen its sales climb past IBM’s (see chart below). HP is now extending its reach by promising to meet the demands for Web-based architectures and data warehouses.
New research into IT project failures
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Michael Krigsman
September 26th, 2007
Computer Associates has released a study into the causes of IT project failures. Although full results have not been released publicly, I did obtain the detailed slides, some of which are presented below. From the press release:
New research from CA, conducted by independent research company Loudhouse of 100 IT Directors across the UK and Ireland, reveals that poor visibility of IT project status and a lack of management control over them is costing the UK over a quarter of a billion pounds each year. A third of all projects implemented each year end up over budget with the typical over-spend between 10% and 20% of the original budget. The survey also highlighted the increased complexity of IT projects, with a typical company running 29 projects at any one time and an average IT budget of between £1m and £5m.
Microsoft Stealth Update and Windows XP repair don’t mix
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Adrian Kingsley-Hughes
September 27th, 2007
Remember that Stealth Update I talked about a couple of weeks ago? The one that Microsoft sent down the pipes to XP and Vista users and installed it irrespective of whether the user had given consent for updates to be installed? Remember too how the apologists claimed that there was nothing wrong with how Microsoft had behaved because there was no harm done? Well, it turns out that this update isn’t as benign as we first thought and can indeed cause problems for Windows XP users if they try to repair their installation.
Information uncovered by Scott Dunn of WindowSecrets.com indicated that a bug in this update prevented users from being able to download and install patches on XP systems that have been repaired:
However, after running the repair option from an XP CD-ROM, Automatic Updates defaults to “on,” and the new 7.0.600.381 executables are automatically downloaded and installed. These new executables fail to register themselves with the operating system, preventing Windows Update from working as intended. This, in turn, prevents Microsoft’s 80 latest updates from being
Visual Studio 2008 – New Features
Click title for source at CodeProject.com…
By Ramana. G.V.
Introduction
Visual Studio 2008 code name “Orcas” Beta 2 has just hit the road and, since it is Beta 2, this means Visual Studio 2008 is feature complete and is ready for RTM. Below, we would find a brief introduction of some of the new features introduced with VS 2008 and .NET 3.5 Beta 2.
A quick list of some of the new features are:
- Multi-Targeting support
- Web Designer and CSS support
- ASP.NET AJAX and JavaScript support
- Project Designer
- Data
- LINQ – Language Integrated Query
The features listed and explained in this paper are not complete and this document intends to give you a forehand to start off with VS 2008.
Multi-Targeting Support
Earlier, each Visual Studio release only supported a specific version of the .NET Framework. For example, VS 2003 only works with .NET 1.1, and VS 2005 only works with .NET 2.0.
One of the major changes with the VS 2008 release is to support what Microsoft calls “Multi-Targeting”. This means that Visual Studio will now support targeting multiple versions of the .NET Framework, and developers will be able to take advantage of the new features that Visual Studio provides without having to migrate their existing projects and deployed applications to use a new version of the .NET Framework.
Now when we open an existing project or create a new one with VS 2008, we can pick which version of the .NET Framework to work with. The IDE will update its compilers and feature-set to match the chosen .NET Framework.
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Gloomy Forecast for IT Work Force
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Roy Mark
September 25, 2007
WASHINGTON—The topic was education and the talk was not optimistic at the Institute for a Competitive Workforce’s Sept. 25 workshop. A part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ICW drew several hundred participants to its event, held with the goal of promoting effective and sustainable business and education/work force partnerships.
“Our continued leadership is not inevitable and may not be sustainable,” Fred Tipson, Microsoft’s senior policy counsel, said in an afternoon panel discussion focused on upgrading the current and future work force’s digital literacy and math and science skills. “The question is whether our work force or some other country’s will be beneficiaries of new technology.”
Tipson referred to America’s ability to continue to produce high school and college graduates with the skills needed to be successful in today’s technology work force as “dire.”
Introducing: Adobe’s Software for the Technical Writer
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Clint Boulton
September 25, 2007
Determined to earn revenues beyond the Web developer market, Adobe Sept. 25 released its Technical Communication Suite, a bundle of software designed to help technical writers improve the way they create technical documentation.
TCS seeks to help educate users via both traditional text and graphics and rich media, and it supports Adobe Flash Player-compatible video, SWF, MP3 and AVI files as well as Adobe PDF (Portable Document Format), XML and Darwin Information Typing Architecture
The suite combines three existing Adobe products—Captivate 3, which is used to create software simulations; Acrobat 3D Version 8, which lets users create 3-D documents without additional CAD software; and FrameMaker 8, an authoring tool designed to handle complex technical manuals—and an update to one of its products—RoboHelp 7, a tool used to create online help systems.
Most Companies Have No Plan To Deal With Impending Brain Drain
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In the next 10 years, about one-in-three companies expect 20% or more of their workforce will be eligible to retire, according Monster’s recent national survey of 550 HR managers.
Marianne Kolbasuk McGee
Sept. 25, 2007
Most companies recognize that an exodus of talent threatens their business in the coming years, yet few have knowledge retention programs to deal with a brain drain caused by retiring baby boomers, according to a survey by Monster Worldwide.
In the next 10 years, about one-in-three companies expect 20% or more of their workforce will be eligible to retire, according Monster’s recent national survey of 550 HR managers.
However, only 20% of companies have formal strategies to manage and preserve organizational knowledge, said Jeff Quinn, director of Monster Intelligence, the research arm of online job site Monster.com, in an interview.
That’s because most companies are too busy focusing on short-term issues, like current employee turnover, he said. “A good knowledge strategy could help these companies feel less under the gun in dealing with their problems today, as well,” he said.
Revised WinXP policy dooms Linux desktop prospects without real OEM marketing efforts
Click title to read rest of article at ZDNet.com…
Paula Rooney
September 25th, 2007
It should come as no surprise that HP is considering expanding its Linux PC efforts, given that its top rival is selling Ubuntu Linux PCs in the U.S and Microsoft is trying to kill any potential interest in them.
HP began selling Red Hat Linux PCs in Australia and is reportedly considering expanding that pilot program to other nations, including the U.S.
Contacted yesterday, an HP spokeswoman denied that the PC giant confirmed any such plan to media outlets. But she would not deny the reports. HP, like any other company, is constantly reviewing its PC strategies, she would only say.
Trojan attack targets top executives
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Liam Tung, ZDNet Australia
September 25, 2007
Top-level employees of publicly listed companies are being targeted by cybercriminals using malware-infected RTF documents disguised as recruitment letters.
Security company MessageLabs reported that 1,100 e-mails containing malware-infected RTF (rich text file) attachments were recorded over a 16-hour period this month. Four separate waves appeared between September 13 and 14, the company said.
“All (the e-mails) were going after (top-level) management. The e-mails included the company name in the subject field, purporting to be a recruitment company. What it had in the attachment is an executable RTF file,” a MessageLabs representative said.
OpenOffice bug hits multiple operating systems
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Liam Tung, ZDNet Australia
September 25, 2007
Security experts have discovered vulnerabilities in OpenOffice.org that could allow attackers to remotely execute code on Linux, Windows or Apple Mac-based computers.
OpenOffice version 2.0.4 and earlier versions are vulnerable to maliciously crafted TIFF files, which can be delivered in an e-mail attachment, published on a Web site or shared using peer-to-peer software. The next version of OpenOffice (version 2.3) arrived on September 17 and is not affected by the flaw.
