Offshoring
The Los Angeles Times, 5/30/04: Outsourcing Ax Falls Hard on Tech Workers
As the slump persists, some train their low-cost replacements before being shown the door.
By Warren Vieth, Times Staff Writer
SANTA CLARA, Calif. — The global economy finally caught up with Cliff Cotterill.
On Friday, the software engineer drove his pickup truck to Building 54 at Agilent Technologies Inc. in Santa Clara. He made his way through the warren of partitions to his cubicle. Then he turned in his laptop computer and employee badge and said goodbye to 25 years of his life.
There were no parting ceremonies, no official farewells. His department had held a big lunch in August, when he and others were scheduled for termination. Cotterill was given a brief extension.
But this weekend, when he was only 11 weeks away from being eligible for early retirement, the ax finally fell. Cotterill, 54, joined the growing ranks of computer professionals who so recently occupied a prized position in the U.S. economy but are now seeing their jobs disappear — many outsourced to foreigners.
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IT Management
Computerworld, 5/31/04: Worm Lays Waste To IT's Defenses
Politics, project delays and an ineffective response allow for a Sasser disaster.
Security Manager's Journal by Mathias Thurman
I was planning to spend my week evaluating disk encryption products before the Sasser worm breached our defenses. What's more frustrating than the worm, however, is the fact that proposed projects that could have prevented it have been bogged down for a number of reasons.
My team and I are almost done selecting a patch management product and have all but decided on PatchLink Update from PatchLink Corp. in Scottsdale, Ariz. We run a wide range of servers and operating systems, and PatchLink seemed to work with the majority of them during our evaluation.
Meanwhile, we continue to deal with frustrating patching problems. The W32/Sasser attack is the latest example.
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PC Migration
Infoworld, 6/1/04: Symantec tool eases PC migration
Version 3.0 reduces costs, downtime
By Ed Scannell
Hoping to ease the migration process involved with moving corporate users to new desktops, Symantec on Tuesday unveiled a new tool that automates many of the more mundane tasks associated with PC migration.
Version 3.0 of the Symantec Client Migration tool features the company's AutoMigrate function, a fully automated, script-based migration service. The new product also has a Web-based interface making it easier for users to carry out their own migration and application update tasks.
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Security
ZDNet, 6/2/04: Symantec CEO hits Microsoft security myth
By Tony Hallett
Symantec CEO John Thompson has hit out at "the myth" that Microsoft's operating system is inherently less secure than the open-source alternatives, which he likened to a "dead-end alley". However, he still had few kind words for the software giant.
Thompson believes the reason Microsoft is so often seen as culpable for virus outbreaks and security flaws is simply because it is the biggest target--though he admitted that if "things get too homogenized, it is not a good thing"--especially where security is concerned.
And while some believe Microsoft's move into the antivirus field, through acquisition, means it is best placed to heal its own wounds, Thompson is unconcerned, claiming Microsoft lacks the credentials to be taken seriously in the antivirus sector.
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Personal Computers
C|net, 6/1/04: Intel to open code for booting up PCs, servers
By Michael Kanellos
Intel will work with CollabNet to release open-source code designed to make the boot-up process for PCs and servers more predictable and faster.
Under the collaboration, Intel will release a driver development kit and what it calls firmware foundation code later this year under the open-source Common Public License.
The code comes from Intel's Tiano project, which aims to replace the BIOS (basic input-output system) software that takes an inventory of the hardware in or attached to a computer and allows the hardware to speak to the operating system and ultimately to the applications.
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TiVO Alert
The Discovery Channel, 6/3/04, 10:00p ET: Thomas L. Friedman Reporting: The Other Side of Outsourcing
Editor’s Note: Mr. Friedman is a columnist for the New York Times and a strong advocate for a free market global economy that is currently being propelled by business process outsourcing.
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