CenterBeam
Saint John Telegraph Journal, 9/16/04: Saint John firm lands major contract
Company spokesman says things are going 'great guns' for CenterBeam
BY KHALID MALIK
Telegraph-Journal
CenterBeam has added another high-profile customer to its list.
The San Jose, Calif.-based information technology company with a customer service centre in Saint John, said Univation Technologies has selected CenterBeam to manage its IT infrastructure.
A company focused on researching, developing and licensing new ways to make polyethylene, Univation is a joint venture between ExxonMobil and Dow Chemicals.
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Offshoring
CIO, 9/15/04: IT Outsourcing's Friend in Congress
Rep. Bill Thomas, a free trade proponent, keeps the door open to offshore labor
BY BEN WORTHEN
Rep. Bill Thomas (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was once compared by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to both General George Patton and football coach Vince Lombardi. The bullheadedness Thomas shares with both men is captured in two stories about him that are part of congressional lore.
True story: Last summer, during debate on a pension reform bill, Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee secluded themselves in a congressional library, ostensibly to delay a vote. Thomas took the unprecedented step of calling the Capitol Police on them. (The cops declined to intervene, and Thomas later apologized.) Also a true story: In 1995, Thomas, then 53, had a chest-to-chest altercation with then-Rep. Sam Gibbons (D-Fla.), 75, during a debate over Medicare reform legislation—an episode still known in Washington as the "brawl in the hall" (Gibbons also pulled on Thomas's necktie).
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Security
The New York Times, 9/20/04: Attacks on Windows PC's Grew in First Half of 2004
By JOHN MARKOFF
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 19 - A survey of Internet vulnerabilities to be released Monday shows a sharp jump in attacks on Windows-based personal computers during the first six months of 2004, along with a marked increase in commercially motivated threats.
The Internet Security Threat Report says that from Jan. 1 to June 30 there were at least 1,237 newly discovered software vulnerabilities, or flaws that could compromise security. That translates into an average of 48 new vulnerabilities a week.
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The Register, 9/20/04: Rise of the Botnets
By John Leyden
The first half of 2004 saw a huge increase in zombie PCs. Also called bots, their average numbers monitored by security firm Symantec rose between January and June from under 2,000 to more than 30,000 per day - peaking at 75,000 on one day.
Botnets are computers infected by worms or Trojans and taken over surreptitiously by hackers and brought into networks to send spam, more viruses, or launch denial of service attacks.
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Computerworld, 9/15/04: Anatomy of a worm
Opinion by Jose Nazario, Arbor Networks
SEPTEMBER 15, 2004 (COMPUTERWORLD) - The economic impact of Internet worm attacks is staggering, with analysts reporting that the Bagle, Netsky and MyDoom worms combined caused several billion dollars in damage from lost productivity, business disruption, bandwidth consumption and manpower costs. While there were many worms in the past 18 months, there were only a few devastating ones, giving companies a somewhat false sense of comfort.
Now imagine a world where worm attacks frequently occur because hackers and rogue developers have access to "worm kits" or development tools that provide the basic building blocks for rapid worm development.
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Big Picture
Harvard Business School, Working Knowledge, 9/13/04: Learning from Failure
by Evan I. Schwartz
Failure is the rule rather than the exception, and every failure contains information. One of the most misleading lessons imparted by those who have reached their goal is that the ones who win are the ones who persevere. Not always. If you keep trying without learning why you failed, you'll probably fail again and again. Perseverance must be accompanied by the embrace of failure. Failure is what moves you forward. Listen to failure.
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