Security
CIO, 5/15/03: The Bugs Stop Here
Don't blame Microsoft. Don't blame the hackers. Blame yourself for insecure software. Better yet, stop blaming and start moving toward operational excellence.
BY SCOTT BERINATO
THIS PAST WINTER, a worm known as Slammer rattled the Internet violently enough to become what you might call a "CNN-level virus"—that is, it burrowed its way into the national consciousness.
Nearly everything about the SQL Slammer was old. It was an old hack that exploited a year-old vulnerability found in an old target, Microsoft software. There was a patch to block Slammer that was six months old, and that patch suffered from an old patch problem: It was so kludgy to install that the patch needed a patch. Above all, the reaction to Slammer—the call to use the event to build security awareness—was so old it called Bob Hope "kid."
But this much was new: Everyone agreed that Slammer was your fault.
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The Wall Street Journal, 5/19/03: Web Vigilantes Give Spammers Big Dose of Their Own Medicine
They Find Mass E-Mailers
And Play Tricks on Them
By MYLENE MANGALINDAN
When all 24 office phones at Scott Richter's e-mail marketing company started ringing at once, with nobody at the other end of the line, employees knew they were under attack again.
Daniel Dye, the systems administrator, could do little. After 15 minutes into the lunchtime assault last month, Mr. Dye recalls yelling, "Go ahead and pull your phones out of the walls for now. It'll be easier to think about what to do." Examining the phone system's central computer, Mr. Dye found that someone had hacked into it and programmed a feature that caused all the phones to ring at the same time.
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Digital Life
The New York Times, 5/18/03: Dating a Blogger, Reading All About It
By WARREN ST. JOHN
Rick Bruner's awakening to the power of the written word came by way of a throwaway line, typed one afternoon in the cerulean glow of his I.B.M. ThinkPad.
Mr. Bruner, a 37-year-old Manhattan marketing consultant, keeps a Web log, an online diary known as a blog. After coming in for some sporting abuse from a friend who told him blogging was a waste of time, Mr. Bruner wrote in his blog that the friend "was fat and runs like a girl," adding that he was sure the friend would not be offended "because he doesn't read blogs." With a push of a button, the comment was published on Mr. Bruner's site, www.bruner.net/blog, and accessible to anyone with a computer.
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Business Communications
Business 2.0, 5/15/03: Unplug That Projector!
Edward Tufte says PowerPoint has ruined business presentations.
By Jimmy Guterman
Hi, my name is Jimmy. I'm 40 years old, I make my living as a consultant, and I've never created a presentation using Microsoft PowerPoint. Clients occasionally look at me as if I'm from Mars when I show up without slides. I've found PowerPoint presentations to be superficial ways of delivering information. They are not actual presentations; they are, in fact, speaker's notes on which a real presentation should be built.
…
Early on in his astonishing new booklet The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, Edward R. Tufte quotes Louis Gerstner's recent autobiography, focusing on a moment when the then-new IBM (IBM) chief switches off the slide projector of one of his subordinates and says, "Let's just talk about your business." It's a rare moment of business clarity: Gerstner, beginning his remaking of the venerable technology giant, is telling his staff that technology is getting in the way of understanding business. It's a radical thought. The next time you sit in a conference room and view slide after slide of bullet points, it's worth wondering whether you're learning anything other than how the presenters organize their thoughts.
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The New York Times, 5/19/03: Business Is Toying With a Web Tool
By AMY CORTESE
Is there a role for wikis in the workplace?
The wiki, a quirky software technology that has been kicking around the Web since the mid-90's, is starting to gain respectability. But will the business world embrace a tool that until recently has been used mainly by techies and Internet free spirits?
A wiki — the Hawaiian word for fast — is similar to a Web log in that the software makes it extremely easy for anyone to publish on the Internet. But unlike a Web log, which is typically the work of a single author making diary-style entries in chronological order, a wiki is the collective work of many authors.
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