Offshoring
Computerworld, 3/5/04: Senate pushes ahead with offshore outsourcing legislation
But the effort has drawn fire from the Information Technology Association of America
News Story by Grant Gross
MARCH 05, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - The U.S. Senate voted to approve an amendment restricting federal tax dollars from being used on jobs going overseas, a day after a U.S. representative introduced a bill prohibiting federal grants and loans from going to some companies that send jobs out of the country.
The Senate, by a vote of 70-26, voted to approve an amendment from Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) that would prohibit taxpayer dollars from being used to outsource or take offshore work formerly done in the U.S. The amendment, added to a bill to restructure corporate taxes, would prohibit outsourcing in three areas of government contracting: privatizing of federal work, federal procurement of goods and services, and state government procurement using federal funds.
[more]
IT Management
eWeek, 3/1/04: Patch Manager Gets Repository
By Paula Musich
Marimba improves data gathering.
Marimba Inc. is stepping up its efforts to move into the patch management space with the launch of its latest Marimba Security Patch Management offering.
The company added several new features to Version 2.0, which is built on its Marimba 6.0 architecture, including an integrated patch repository that can automatically collect patch information from Microsoft Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and Shavlik Technologies LLC. Shavlik is a small patch management company that collects information about patches and provides it in machine-readable format.
[more]
Microsoft
Computerworld, 3/5/04: Windows XP SP2 could break existing applications
Microsoft focused on security improvements at the expense of backward compatibility
News Story by Joris Evers
MARCH 05, 2004 (IDG NEWS SERVICE) - When Microsoft Corp. releases Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP later this year, some software developers may find that their applications no longer work on updated Windows machines.
Microsoft has made something of a trade-off with the update, focusing on security improvements at the expense of backward compatibility. The software vendor is calling on all software developers to test their code against the beta version of SP2 or face the possibility that the update will break their handiwork.
Windows XP SP2 is more than the usual roll-up of bug fixes and updates. It's also being used to make significant changes to the software that are designed to improve security. These changes can render applications inoperable, Microsoft said.
[more]
Information Week, 3/5/04: Tweak to Microsoft's Support Lifecycle Policy planned
Expect Microsoft sometime in the weeks ahead to better define the circumstances under which it extends support for a product that's approaching its end-of-support deadline. Rather than surprising customers with a last-minute extension, the plan is to provide more advance notice of product-support extensions and explain the factors that lead to them, says Andy Erlandson, a director with Microsoft Services.
When Microsoft introduced its Support Lifecycle Policy in October 2002, the goal was to give customers a more predictable timetable for how long hot fixes and other kinds of support would be provided. Under that policy, the rule of thumb became five years of mainstream support and two years of extended support, generally provided at extra cost. The one thing Microsoft didn't do back in Oct. '02 was tell customers when it might stretch those rules, as it did last January with Windows 98. Just four days before Windows 98's support was scheduled to expire, Microsoft added two-and-a-half years to the operating system's support schedule. That meant IT managers faced a crucial deadline one day, but had lots of extra time on their hands the next. "With Windows 98, we were late in making that extension known," says Erlandson.
[more]
Hewlett-Packard
C|net, 3/7/04: HP to put blade servers on a diet
By Stephen Shankland
Hewlett-Packard will announce a new, thinner blade server Monday, a system that will enable customers to stack twice as many of the dual-processor machines into the same space.
The BL30p server is scheduled to ship by the end of June and will cost less than the current dual-processor BL20p, according to HP, though both systems use Intel's new "Prestonia" generation of the Xeon processor.
[more]
6:59:23 AM 
|
