What not to do when your customers are down [ComputerWorld Canada 3/18/2005] IT consultants and contractors must be very careful when their clients are down. This real-life story involves client with a Linux box running a variety of critical system packages, including a major mainstream database. The client's attitude to system administration is, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The result: after two years of not applying patches, the server is hacked. The consultant wants to rebuilt with current versions, but the client insists on having it restored, not upgraded, “It worked fine for three years. Put it back.” Of course, the consultant must then install security patches to prevent the box from being hacked again. Sadly, the database does not want to run. None of the vendors support the software — but the client insists on looking for a workaround instead of updating. What would you do? 4/27/2005 7:29:06 PM    

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Of Outsourcing And Ocelots: The IT World According To John Cleese [InformationWeek 4/6/2005] All outsourcing projects involve some risk: You may not get expected service levels, your vendor may lose personnel that were key to your project, or flood, famine, and pestilence could break out in the country to which you've dispatched your entire IT operation. Should these inconvenient facts keep you from outsourcing? Not in the least, according to Brit comedian-turned-business consultant John Cleese. "A man who is afraid to make mistakes is unlikely to make anything." 4/27/2005 7:03:22 PM    

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A simple XML data store for your Windows applications [Builder.com] Want to create a Windows application that lets your user edit and view structured data locally without connecting to a remote database? XML is the answer, and with Visual Studio it's a snap. 4/27/2005 6:52:34 PM    

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Preserving Backward Compatibility [O'Reilly ONLamp 2/17/2005] Change is inevitable, but incompatibility is not. Upgrades are good, but forcing your users to change time after time is unpleasant. A little bit of planning can go a long way toward keeping your users happy. Garrett Rooney offers strategies for preserving backward compatibility, drawing examples from the Subversion project. 4/27/2005 8:27:07 AM    

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Hackers Write Spyware For Cash, Not Fame [InformationWeek 4/4/2005] More than 70% of virus writers are writing spyware under contract, one more piece of evidence that hacking has evolved from mischievous hobby to moneymaking criminal venture. The bulk of the spyware being created by hackers linked to organized crime. According to Aladdin Knowledge Systems, "They're doing it for financial gain, pure and simple. Unlike in the past, when hackers were mostly 'script kiddies' who had nothing better to do, it's quickly becoming more of an organized crime venture." 4/27/2005 8:21:03 AM    

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Comments are More Important than Code [ACM Queue March 2005 via Slashdot: 4/26/2005; 10:53:30 PM] Jef Raskin goes through the arguments that seem obvious only in hindsight - that 'self-documenting' code is good but not enough, that we should be able to write code based on good documentation, not the other way around, and that the thing that separates human-written code from computer-generated code is that our stuff is readable to future programmers. The Slashdot discussion is worth reading too. 4/27/2005 8:15:33 AM    

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