IT Management
Computerworld, 11/21/03: As laptop popularity grows, companies are holding back
As laptop popularity grows, companies are holding back
Online fraud concerns on rise as holiday season nears
Software failure cited in August blackout investigation
Security concerns may slow the corporate embrace of laptops, analysts say
Story by Roger Tung and Michael Kramer
Rock-bottom prices are fueling a boom in notebook computer sales, as consumers dump bulky old desktops purchased three or four years ago, but security concerns will bar many companies from switching over, analysts said.
Taiwan manufacturers make over 60% of the world's laptop PCs for companies such as Dell Inc., Toshiba Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Co., and they expect to make deep inroads into the consumer market next year. But analysts don't anticipate the same success with replacing desktops in the workplace.
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Computerworld, 11/21/03: Users struggle to pinpoint IT costs of Sarbanes-Oxley compliance
The ongoing nature of the required work complicates spending estimates.
Story by Thomas Hoffman
Sarbanes-Oxley readiness costs can be hard for companies to pin down, partly because complying with the new financial reporting law isn't a one-time event like Y2k, several IT managers said last week.
Eastman Chemical Co. hasn't even tried to evaluate the IT costs associated with its Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance initiative, because the work is viewed as "an ongoing effort," said Mark Montgomery, director of administrative operations support and technology systems at the Kingsport, Tenn., company.
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Security
Infoworld, 11/21/03: Microsoft investigates possible Exchange 2003 flaw
Outlook Web Access component may enable security breach
By Joris Evers, IDG News Service November 21, 2003
Microsoft is investigating a potential security issue with Exchange Server 2003, which would be the first since the e-mail server was launched last month.
Microsoft investigates possible Exchange 2003 flaw
The potential flaw lies in the Outlook Web Access (OWA) component of Exchange Server 2003. A network administrator at a Nashville, Tennessee, provider of investment performance reporting tools found that users logging in to OWA could be logged in to another user's mailbox at random and have full access privileges.
"This seems to be a major security flaw and we have had to shut off OWA indefinitely because of the issue," the network administrator wrote in a posting to NTBugtraq, a well-known security mailing list.
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Silicon.Com, 11/21/03: IT security increasingly a cash cow
by Will Sturgeon
Overall budgets unchanged but security's slice of the pie still getting bigger...
Security spending continues to grow despite a capping of overall IT budgets.
Figures released by Meta Group show two-thirds of companies increased their security spend this year.
Security now accounts for 8.2 per cent of the total IT budget, up from 7.6 per cent in 2002, according to Meta's 2004 Worldwide IT Benchmark Report.
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eWeek, 11/21/03: Debian Linux Under Attack by Hackers
By Dennis Fisher
An unknown cracker this week compromised several machines belonging to the Debian Project, including servers that house the project's bug-tracking system and security components. Officials from the project said they discovered the intrusion within the last 36 hours and are still working to restore all of the affected machines.
Debian is an open-source operating system that uses the Linux kernel and also includes a number of packages and tools from the GNU Project. The Debian Project is run by Software in the Public Interest Inc., a non-profit group that runs a number of similar projects.
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Microsoft
Microsoft Watch, 11/20/03: XP Service Pack 2 Beta Due Real Soon Now
By Mary Jo Foley
Neowin has posted to its site a copy of the full Windows XP Service Pack 2 beta invitation. The invitation says testers should expect to receive the code sometime in the next few weeks.
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Collaborative Technologies
Tim O’Reilly Blog, 11/23/03: Meetup and Blogging Stats as an Opinion Indicator?
Tim O'Reilly
Allen Noren sent me an interesting note the other day: "I took a quick look at Meetup and noticed the activity level for different political campaigns. Interesting datapoint." Here's the list:
Top Topics in Politics & Activism
1. Dean in 2004 (>144,200 members)
2. Clark in 2004 (>45,400)
3. Kucinich in 2004 (>18,300)
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