Last week’s biggest news was old news: Microsoft will have to pay a big fine and make changes to Windows because the company illegally tried to lock in European customers. Yes, you remember right: That news did originally come down in 2004. Hey, sometimes it takes a while before we notice.
“Ultimately, IT can be counted on to get the job done. Just budget the money and get out of the way.” Who said that recently? Some cheerleading columnist in Computerworld? The head of a big IT consulting firm trying to win some business? A self-promoting CIO blowing smoke to stroke his own ego?
I don’t mind a little cynicism — it’s a natural and only mildly toxic by-product of paying attention. So recently, when Microsoft’s Office Open XML file format was rejected as an international standard, I wasn’t bothered that Microsoft said it was “extremely delighted” by the result.
Why don’t IT people get more respect? On this US Labour Day, things are actually looking better for people who work in corporate IT.
Last month wasn’t a good one for data security news. First, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers) exposed the Social Security numbers of 445,000 retirees. Then the US Federal Trade Commission revealed trade secrets from an antitrust lawsuit. And later in the month, security experts said Monster.com has leaked the personal data of hundreds of thousands of job seekers.
The SCO Group’s US$5 billion (NZ$7.1 billion) threat against Linux is effectively finished. On Friday August 10, US District Judge Dale Kimball ruled that SCO doesn’t actually own the copyrights that it was using to threaten — and in some cases, sue — Linux users.
Using Second Life for business? Yeah, it’s a screwy idea. OK, there are companies that have set up imaginary shops in Second Life and other “virtual worlds”, including Toyota, Reebok and Adidas. And yes, IBM and Intel have made a big deal about using Second Life for some meetings.
Late last month, Craigslist vanished from the internet. So did LiveJournal and Technorati. CNET.com and Second Life were reportedly gone for a while too. What happened? The datacentre they all shared went dark because of a power failure. Simple enough, right? Except that the main point of using that datacentre was so they’d never have to worry about power failures.
Google is getting rid of its 2038 cookies. That’s the year 2038, when web browser cookies created by its websites over the past decade were set to expire. From now on, Google’s cookies will only last for two years from the date of your last visit to a Google site.
The iPhone has finally arrived [in the US]. Apple sold more than 500,000 of the little darlings the first weekend, and you can be sure that some of the people who bought them are at your company. They’ll want to use their iPhones for work. And no matter what Gartner says, if one of them is your CEO, you’ve got no choice.
Forty years. Thousands of IT products. Many of them made a huge difference for technology professionals, and they’re fondly remembered. But only a few truly transformed IT — and how IT people, users and businesses did their work. Here are 10 IT products from the past 40 years that changed everything:
The big story is immigration. Well, that’s not really true. The big story is jobs. That’s what most Americans are concerned about. Not culture wars. Not racial purity. Not abstract notions of globalisation. America absorbs every new culture and ethnic group it encounters and grows richer and more complex every time it does. And Americans love inexpensive and high-quality products that come from the rest of the world. In fact, they’re addicted to them.
And now, the Microsoft coffee table. Don’t kid yourself, Microsoft is going into the furniture business. The product that Microsoft unveiled recently under the name “Surface” isn’t a technology, a reference design, a user interface, an application, a PC or an appliance. It’s furniture. And yes, that really is the business Microsoft intends to get into.
We hate automated customer service systems. That’s the key finding of a recent study by Accenture (see Computerworld, May 28, page 26). It’s important to note that the study didn’t look at how well we like acquiring, installing, integrating, operating and maintaining customer service automation. It was about how well we like being on the receiving end. Short answer: We don’t.
Coming soon to a TV near you: a show about corporate IT. No, really. Last week, NBC announced that its new show The IT Crowd would be a “mid-season starter”, which is network jargon for “As soon as one of our other new shows gets awful ratings, we’ll put this one on the schedule.”