Stories by Frank Hayes

Waiting for Code Red

Code Red won't actually attack again until August 20. But what have we already learned from it?

Death of the web?

It's not even the end of May, and one analyst outfit is already pronouncing the death of the web.

The source of clout

Does it matter? Does it really matter whether your CIO is one of the five best-paid executives in the company? In last week's Computerworld US cover story, reporter Kim S Nash dug through proxy statements for the Fortune 1000 and discovered that only 46 CIOs - 4.6% - made that lofty grade.

Re-up or Remove

The bumper sticker reads, "Don't laugh it's paid for." The car it's attached to isn't the newest or nicest in the parking lot, but it's good enough for somebody. And you can be pretty sure that it costs less to keep that clunker running for six months than one car payment.

Privacy? Bank on it

Remember the Y2k sermon? Back in 1999, the American Bankers Association wrote a sermon for preachers to deliver, telling the people in the pews not to panic over Y2k and to trust their bankers.

Gorilla tactics

Let’s talk about implementing XML-based B2B e-commerce. Wait -- don’t run away!

By nerds betrayed

Betrayed --that’s the word to describe the IT people at Xerox. When some users violated company policy and installed Microsoft Windows XP beta software on their PCs, the result was what Xerox called an "isolated network outage."

Mum on privacy

The European Commission (EC) thinks its privacy rules for US companies doing business in Europe are no big deal. "These concerns are unfounded," one EC official said last week. That's sort of like the guy who doesn't own a cell phone saying he thinks a law banning cell-phone use while driving is no big deal. He's not the one who'll have to change what he does.

The Microsoft way

What is it with Microsoft and open source? It's not so complicated. Microsoft hates the competition from open source. Microsoft loves the benefits of open source. Microsoft wants the customers who like open source. Microsoft doesn't want to let any of its intellectual property turn into open source.

Learn from the dead

Real innovation is messy, expensive and highly inefficient. Mostly, it just doesn’t work. Sure, when a really new idea delivers the goods, it’s great — whole new opportunities open up. But the rest of the time, when it doesn’t work out, the naysayers snicker their I-told-you-so’s and everyone agrees that it never made sense anyhow.

The 85% solution

Is 85% enough? Oracle chairman Larry Ellison thinks so. At last week’s Oracle AppsWorld conference in Paris, he told the crowd his company’s E-Business Suite "doesn’t do everything our customers want. We have an 80% or 85% solution."

IT: Nifty at 50?

Fifty years. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Fifty years ago this month, Arthur Andersen consultants decided to create the first computer consulting business, effectively inventing commercial IT.

Unsafe at any speed

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation announced last month that in December, it broke up an international ring of teenagers who had bragged that their goal was to "take down the internet" on New Year’s Eve.

The real threat

On the first business day of 2001, venture capitalist Robertson Stephens downgraded the stocks of a handful of IT-related companies.

Got gadgets?

Christmas is coming. OK, you know that already. Anybody who walked through a mall or watched all the ads spill out of the Sunday paper this weekend knows that. Yes, it means that for the next month, any IT shop that’s supporting a web store will be on call 24 hours a day. But it also means something a little more subtle for all corporate IT shops: This is when users get gadgets.

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