PC Management
Computerworld, 10/27/03: EDS extends product life-cycle management to Windows desktops
PLM tools may be poised to break out of their engineering niche
Story by Jaikumar Vijayan
OCTOBER 24, 2003 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - Product life-cycle management (PLM) tools -- long confined to use in engineering environments -- may slowly be headed out of their traditional niche.
This week, Plano, Texas-based Electronic Data Systems Corp. announced a version of its Teamcenter PLM software that is designed for use in a standard Windows desktop environment.
The product, dubbed Teamcenter Community, offers a range of collaborative capabilities that let users of Windows 2000 and higher access product life-cycle information locked up in engineering systems. With it, more people within an enterprise, including marketing and finance teams, as well as suppliers and partners, will be able to access, visualize and collaborate around product information such as computer-aided design models and drawings, according to the company.
[more]
IT Management
Computerworld, 10/27/03: New law would require computer security audits, status reports
If passed, it would force companies to comply with third-party benchmarks
Story by Dan Verton
OCTOBER 24, 2003 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - WASHINGTON -- New legislation being drafted in the U.S. House of Representatives, which could be introduced as early as next week, would require all publicly traded companies to conduct independent computer security assessments and report the results yearly in their annual reports.
Computerworld obtained a copy of the bill in draft form today. Just this week, Richard Clarke, the former chairman of the President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board, called for congressional action on a specific standard that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could use to measure and enforce corporate cybersecurity efforts (see story).
[more]
Security
Computerworld, 10/27/03: Q&A: DNS inventor Paul Mockapetris on Internet security
The critical DNS system is more robust at the top, he said
Story by Jaikumar Vijayan
OCTOBER 24, 2003 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - Paul Mockapetris invented the Internet's core Domain Name System (DNS), which is a highly distributed hierarchical database that translates Web names into Internet Protocol addresses, and vice versa. Without it, the Internet as it's structured today wouldn't work. In an interview this week with Computerworld, he talked about the state of the DNS a year after the first distributed denial-of-service attack on the system (see story).
Why is DNS security such a concern? There was a cybersecurity report that came out of the U.S. government that said the two biggest security issues were DNS and BGP [Border Gateway Protocol]. Part of it is that this is just the place where an attacker has the most leverage. ... If you can get to control either the traffic lights or change the street signs, you can create chaos on the road system.
Is the DNS safer than it was a year ago? The state of it all is uneven. It is more robust at the top. But the bottom layers are a little bit less safe than they were a year ago just because the attack tools have sort of gotten better. The bad guys share their attack tools, and the good guys haven't bought any new technology to beat them, except at the root server level.
[more]
Microsoft
Infoworld, 10/27/03: Longhorn roadmap to get clarified at PDC
Adam Sohn, a product manager with Microsoft's Platform Strategy Group, admits Microsoft has been less than crystal clear when talking about the timing of the company's next-generation operating system, Longhorn. "There's been a little bit of inconsistency around the dates," Sohn said Oct. 22 in an advance interview on next week's Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles, which is now sold out with 7,000 registrants. Sohn promises Bill Gates, Jim Allchin, and other execs will bring more detail to Microsoft's roadmap in their keynotes.
[more]
Future Focus
The New York Times, 10/27/03: Two Companies at Odds Over the Internet's Future
By STEVE LOHR
ONE year ago, almost to the day, Samuel J. Palmisano, the chief executive of I.B.M., delivered a speech in New York that sketched his company's vision of the future of computing, which he called "on-demand computing."
Today in Los Angeles, Bill Gates, the chairman of the Microsoft Corporation, will present his company's notion of where things are headed, which the software maker calls "seamless computing."
Behind the marketing shorthand is a kind of war of ideas over what can be thought of as "the Internet, Act II," a technological evolution that has been gathering speed. The next-generation development of the Internet has been helped by the continuing and remarkable progress in hardware. But probably more important has been the embrace of a set of software standards - rendered in a nerdy alphabet soup of acronyms, like XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI and so on - that open the door to widespread machine-to-machine communication across the Internet.
[more]
Optimism
The New York Times, 10/26/03: As Silicon Valley Reboots, the Geeks Take Charge
By STEVE LOHR
Are the good times back in Silicon Valley? After all, technology stocks are up sharply this year. A number of tech stalwarts, led by the computer chip giant Intel, have recently reported robust quarterly results. And scores of start-ups like Tellme Networks are thriving again.
But this is no bubble redux. Instead, Silicon Valley, the entrepreneurial hub of the nation's high-tech economy, is rebooting, just as a computer does after it crashes. And this time, the geeks are the ones with the upper hand.
[more]
Solar Threats
Computerworld, 10/27/03: Here comes the sun(storm)
A solar eruption could cause electrical and communications woes for the next two weeks
Story by Todd R. Weiss
OCTOBER 24, 2003 ( COMPUTERWORLD ) - A series of solar eruptions on the sun that began this week prompted electricity generation companies and others to pay closer-than-normal attention to their systems for any signs of service disruptions.
The events on the sun began Oct. 22, according to a statement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Space Environment Center (SEC) in Boulder, Colo., where scientists spotted large amounts of intense solar energy in the form of solar flares heading toward Earth.
[more]
6:45:39 AM 
|
