Have an online "Box" for your files

Box makes it easy to get your files from anywhere you have an internet connection. Access important documents from your desktop, laptop, or even mobile phone on the go. Once you've uploaded your files to Box, you can also share them with anyone, or just keep them safe for as long as you want.

Send large documents, presentations, and zip files to contacts and clients. Forget the hassle of emailing attachments - just send them a link to download! Best of all, you can be notified when they download the file.

Upload files to your Box by sending an email to upload@box.net. The next time you receive an attachment you'd like to save or work on later, forward it to us and it will be sent to your account!

If you have a website or eBay auctions, you can host your photos on Box. Best of all, there are no bandwidth limits and it's as easy as uploading your files to Box! Next time you're on the road, try accessing "m.box.net". It's a quick, lightweight version of Box that lets you access your files from any internet-compatible phone or PDA.

Castle Point Mortgage Achieves Implementation of Cadence Lending Platform

Eight-Month Implementation Accomplished at Hands of Mortgage Company's IT Experts Utilizing Implementation Methodology of Implementation Contractor.

DENVER -- Mortgage Cadence, a leading provider of enterprise lending solutions (ELS) for the mortgage industry, and Castle Point Mortgage, Inc. are pleased to announce the implementation of the Mortgage Cadence Orchestrator[TM] ELS application. Headquartered in Elkridge, Md., Castle Point is a retail lender, operating in multiple states and handling a variety of product types.

Following an extensive due diligence process, Castle Point chose the Mortgage Cadence Orchestrator application as their lending platform. We are pleased to have chosen a software system that is easily customizable to our needs, commented Gerald Infantino, president of Castle Point Mortgage. There was no other system that we found during our selection process that provided the breadth of functionality while offering us the ability to cost effectively implement ourselves. The Mortgage Cadence system will help bring Castle Point Mortgage to the next level and assist us in achieving our long term strategic goals.

Castle Point has seen a substantial amount of growth over the past three years. As of October 2006, Castle Point has increased its loan origination by over 300% compared to its 2003 year-end loan volume. Due to this substantial growth, the Castle Point executives began their search for a new software system in early 2006. The Castle Point team was looking for an application that would handle all of the company's product lines, increase process times and efficiency, as well as a lending platform that would is scalable to meet their future needs. Their decision on the application also needed to be supported by the software company's proven staying power in the market.

Dude their getting Linux

As of 5 pm (Eastern Time), you'll be able to order two new Dell desktop systems and one Dell laptop configuration with Ubuntu Linux 7.04 installed instead of Windows. Dell product manager Lionel Menchaca has the details in his post on Dell's corporate blog this morning. (A posting earlier in the week has more technical details about these new configurations.)

This is a fairly amazing event. I can't remember any big-name vendor of Windows machines ever offering individual consumers the option of buying its hardware with the free, open-source Linux operating system preinstalled.

Two quick thoughts about the news:

* Microsoft has lost its power to intimidate everybody else in the PC industry. Remember when this company would threaten to yank a computer manufacturer's Windows license if it had the temerity to remove desktop shortcuts to Internet Explorer? Now think about how that version of Microsoft would have reacted to Dell's latest move.

* Good things happen when companies make it easy for their customers to suggest ideas and are prepared to act on them. Dell's IdeaStorm Web site allowed Linux users to document their long-standing wishes; it's to Dell's credit that it's making this major revision to its consumer product line in response. Now let's see how the company responds to other popular IdeaStorm suggestions, like making Firefox the default Web browser or letting customers opt out of having their new Dell machine loaded up with the usual trialware junk.

I plan on trying out one of Dell's Linux models in the next month or so. Do you plan on buying one yourself? (I'm especially interested in hearing from people who haven't put Linux on one of their own personal computers before.)

Dynamic Partitioning: Windows Server 2008

Computerworld has an interesting article about a new feature of Windows Server 2008: Dynamic Partitioning. A hardware partitionable server can have isolated hardware partitions comprising CPU, memory and I/O. Each of these segments runs its own Windows instance. It allows you to add, replace and remove hardware without rebooting Windows. This not only improves fault tolerance, but also scalability. In a way, it is RAID for CPU, memory and I/O. This certainly important feature is not a new revolutionary technology, though. Mainframe systems always had similar capabilities. Therefore, it will be one further step for Microsoft in pushing Windows into the datacenter. Unfortunately, this feature will only be supported by the Datacenter and the Itanium editions of Windows Server 2008. By the way, Windows Server 2003 already supports hot-add memory. It is interesting to note, that the white paper about the new features of Windows Server 2008, I linked to earlier, doesn’t mention this new capability. If you want to know more technical details about Dynamic Partitioning, or about the “hot swap feature” as some call it.

Dell Joins Microsoft and Novell Collaboration

Microsoft Corp. and Novell Inc. have announced that Dell Inc. is the first major systems provider to join the business collaboration that was formed by Microsoft and Novell in response to customer demand for greater interoperability and intellectual property (IP) assurance. As part of the agreement, Dell will purchase SUSE Linux Enterprise Server certificates from Microsoft and establish a services and marketing program to migrate existing Linux users who are not Dell Linux customers to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Read more

Windows 2003 Access-based Enumeration (ABE)

ABE filters shared folders visible to a user based on that individual user's access rights, preventing the display of folders or other shared resources that the user does not have rights to access. ABE can be accessed via graphical user interface (GUI), command-line executable tool, and a robust advanced programming interface (API). After download and installation of the MSI on the desired Windows Server 2003 server, you just need to go to the shares where you want to enable ABE. Each share controls whether ABE will be used for the files and folders contained under it. To control if ABE is enabled, you only need to access the Properties sheet for the shared folder. There you will find a new tab named Access-based Enumeration. As seen below.

Access-based Enumeration is a welcome addition to any network. For the longest time, administrators and security professionals have created elaborate workarounds to hide resources from users. Now ABE solves this problem by hiding resources that users don't have explicit access to. It works great for networks that have Windows Server 2003 SP1 servers with any client viewing the resource.

Quick SAMBA tutorial

I needed to setup SAMBA on one of my servers and i came across this quick tutorial which had information to what main parts i was looking for. Giving you a brief run through of the samba.conf file and how PAM works along with SAMBA. This was all in all definatly a good Tutorial.

Vulnerability in Microsoft Office

A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the way Microsoft Office handles a specially crafted drawing object. This update resolves a privately reported vulnerability. The vulnerability is documented in its own subsection in the Vulnerability Details section of this bulletin.An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of an affected system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.When using vulnerable versions of Office, if a user is logged on with administrative user rights, an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could take complete control of the system. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with the same user rights as the logged-on user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.

New Top-Level Domains

ICANN wants public input on its development of a new process for creating, approving, and adding new gTLDs (generic top-level domains like .com, .org etc) to the Internet.

“This is all about choice. We want the diversity of the world’s people, geography and business to be able to be represented in the domain name system,” said Dr Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN. “That is why it’s so important for people to participate in the development of a new gTLD process. We will get input from businesses, governments, and the public at large in the coming months and at the ICANN meeting in Puerto Rico on 25-29 June 2007.”

The new process will lay out how gTLDs are proposed and approved, and should allow for a much wider variety of them to be added in a timely, predictable, and efficient manner. ICANN expects that with the public input, the system for approving new gTLDs should be completed by the end of the year, and applications for new top-level domains could be accepted starting in early 2008.

“If the new approval process comes on-line as planned, the global Internet could see new top-level domains added and available between June and August 2008,” Dr Twomey added. ICANN has overseen two previous extensions of the Internet space: first in 2000 when seven TLDs including .info and .name were added to the domain name system (DNS); the second started in 2004 leading to six more being approved, including .asia.

“When ICANN was founded in 1998, only a few TLDs, including .com, were generally available to the public for registration of domain names. Our mission has been to expand the number of TLDs available to users – and we have made great progress,” Dr Twomey said. “When the new approval process is complete, Internet users around the globe will have more choice in the TLD market.”
Currently there are 120 million registered domain names (unique web addresses) in the world. Of these, 80 million are gTLDs (as opposed to country code top-level domains like .de for Germany or .ca for Canada). The most commonly used gTLD is “.com”, with 62 million domains. There are another 15 gTLDs in existence including .aero to .travel.

Development of the new gTLD process began in December 2005. ICANN’s Generic Names Supporting Organisation (GNSO) has guided the policy development process and its work will be used as the basis for discussion on creating a new approval process. Materials used in meetings, plus minutes and audio recordings, are available on ICANN’s website at http://gnso.icann.org/calendar/.

University of Missouri Hacked

COLUMBIA, Mo. - A computer hacker accessed the Social Security numbers of more than 22,000 current or former students at the University of Missouri, the second such attack this year, school officials said Tuesday. The FBI is investigating. University officials said campus computer technicians confirmed a breach of a database last week by a user or users whose Internet accounts were traced to China and Australia. The hacker accessed personal information of 22,396 University of Missouri-Columbia students or alumni who also worked at one of the system's four campuses in St. Louis, Kansas City, Rolla or Columbia in 2004. The hacker obtained the information through a Web page used to make queries about the status of trouble reports to the university's computer help desk, which is based in Columbia. The information had been compiled for a report, but the data had not been removed from the computer system. In January, a hacker obtained the Social Security numbers of 1,220 university researchers, as well as personal passwords of as many as 2,500 people who used an online grant application system.

Linux: Sharp Zaurus SL-C3200

The Zaurus is in a class by itself, being a cross between a PDA and a handheld computer. Rather than running a somewhat limited PDA operating system, it runs Linux which means the CPU and RAM are the only real limit for running Linux applications. Linux apps must be recompiled to run on the Zaurus but that's not a daunting task, and we've seen many useful ports and open source software for the Z emerge over the years. In fact, there are several ROMs available for the Z as well (modified versions of the OS and even different Linux distros).


It seems that we're in an evolutionary rather than revolutionary period when it comes to PDAs. Witness the Sharp Zaurus SL-C3200 which is basically the same as the Zaurus C3100 it replaces, and the C3100 was quite similar to the Zaurus C30000 it replaced. In fact all three are very, very similar to the now discontinued Zaurus C8600 but the C860 lacked the hard drive. And so from the C3100 to the 3200 we get a 6 gig rather than 4 gig hard drive. For upgraders, there's nothing terribly compelling save the additional hard drive space which is nice for those who want to carry a collection of MP3s or videos for playback on the go.

Vertical Workstation??

Did you know you could lose as much as 66 pounds by sweating on you PC? Well using the Mayo Clinic's vertical workstation, that just might be the weightloss wave of the future.

The vertical workstation is basically a desk mounted over a treadmill that lets office workers to kill two birds with one stone - send emails, check invoices and write reports and burn calories at the same time, say Professors James Levine and Jennifer Miller of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who came up with the machine/desk.

A study conducted at the Mayo Clinic and published in the British Journal of Sports medicine found the average obese person burned 100 calories an hour while walking about one mile an hour while working. The treadmill desks cost about $1,600.

The desk isn't exactly a new idea. The Mayo Clinic has been working on such a prototype as part of its Office of the Future research.In fact in a Network World article from 2005 Levine said that instead of sitting on conventional desk chairs, workers in the Mayo Clinic's prototype environment stand at their desks with a moving treadmill surface underfoot.

MySQL reference guide

Recently i needed a quick rundown of commands in MySQL to browse through some Databases that i needed to check for work. Only using MySQL a few times prior, i searched the net and came up with this quick command reference.

Talk about Stunt Driving!

This might be one of the most crazy driving videos i have ever seen. Between the skill level of the drivers, Trust between the two, and flawless execution by both.

What is the Magnetosphere?

The Earth's magnetosphere was discovered in 1958 by Explorer I during the research performed for the International Geophysical Year. Before this, scientists knew that electric currents flowed in space, because solar eruptions sometimes led to "magnetic storm" disturbances. No one knew, however, where those currents flowed and why, or that the solar wind existed. In August and September of 1958, Project Argus was performed to test a theory about the formation of radiation belts that may have tactical use in war.

The magnetosphere of Earth is a region in space whose shape is determined by the extent of Earth's internal magnetic field, the solar wind plasma, and the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF). In the magnetosphere, a mix of free ions and electrons from both the solar wind and the Earth's ionosphere is confined by magnetic and electric forces that are much stronger than gravity and collisions. In spite of its name, the magnetosphere is distinctly non-spherical. On the side facing the Sun, the distance to its boundary (which varies with solar wind intensity) is about 70,000 km (10-12 Earth radii or RE, where 1 RE=6371 km; unless otherwise noted, all distances here are from the Earth's center). The boundary of the magnetosphere ("magnetopause") is roughly bullet shaped, about 15 RE abreast of Earth and on the night side (in the "magnetotail" or "geotail") approaching a cylinder with a radius 20-25 RE. The tail region stretches well past 200 RE, and the way it ends is not well-known.

The outer neutral gas envelope of Earth, or geocorona, consists mostly of the lightest atoms, hydrogen and helium, and continues beyond 4-5 RE, with diminishing density. The hot plasma ions of the magnetosphere acquire electrons during collisions with these atoms and create an escaping "glow" of fast atoms that have been used to image the hot plasma clouds by the IMAGE mission. The upward extension of the ionosphere, known as the plasmasphere, also extends beyond 4-5 RE with diminishing density, beyond which it becomes a flow of light ions called the polar wind that escapes out of the magnetosphere into the solar wind. Energy deposited in the ionosphere by auroras strongly heats the heavier atmospheric components such as oxygen and molecules of oxygen and nitrogen, which would not otherwise escape from Earth's gravity. Owing to this highly variable heating, however, a heavy atmospheric or ionospheric outflow of plasma flows during disturbed periods from the auroral zones into the magnetosphere, extending the region dominated by terrestrial material, known as the fourth or plasma geosphere, at times out to the magnetopause.

New BlackBerry 8300 Curve

When it comes to BlackBerrys, you have the really tiny one, the one with GPS, and now you can add to that list the one that just rocks. And we're not just talking about the Curve's music player or fully integrated stereo Bluetooth. RIM's latest fun-loving smart phone (available for AT&T later this spring) boasts a sharp two-megapixel camera and a much-improved multimedia software package for taking your favorite songs, pictures, and videos to go--all without sacrificing the long battery life that's made BlackBerry the device of choice for e-mail addicts.

Design Features:
It sports the kind of sleek design that will make BlackBerry Pearl owners say "D'oh!" The Curve is just as slim as the Pearl (0.6 inches), and at 3.9 ounces it's only 0.7 ounces heavier. It slips easily into a pocket, no geeky hip holster required. Granted, at first glance this device doesn't seem as deserving of an iconic name as the Pearl, but the Curve's liquid-silver finish with chrome accents and rounded edges make it an attractive alternative to the Samsung BlackJack.

More important, RIM managed to squeeze in a full-sized backlit keyboard, one that makes the Curve noticeably wider than but also much more reliable than the Pearl, whose not-so-SureType keyboard doesn't always accurately guess the word you're trying to peck. In just a few minutes we were typing e-mails and entering Web addresses at a brisk pace, thanks to the Curve's well-spaced layout. Just like the Pearl and the 8800, the Curve has a trackball for simple (if sometimes erratic) menu navigation.

Microsoft claims Linux is infringing on 235 patents

Microsoft claims that free software like Linux, which runs a big chunk of corporate America, violates 235 of its patents. It wants royalties from distributors and users. Users like you, maybe.

Free software is great, and corporate America loves it. It's often high-quality stuff that can be downloaded free off the Internet and then copied at will. It's versatile - it can be customized to perform almost any large-scale computing task - and it's blessedly crash-resistant.

A broad community of developers, from individuals to large companies like IBM, is constantly working to improve it and introduce new features. No wonder the business world has embraced it so enthusiastically: More than half the companies in the Fortune 500 are thought to be using the free operating system Linux in their data centers.

"It's a tinderbox. Patent law's going to be the terrain on which a big piece of the war's going to be fought. Waterloo is here some where." --Eben Moglen, Executive director, Software Freedom Law Center

But now there's a shadow hanging over Linux and other free software, and it's being cast by Microsoft (Charts, Fortune 500). The Redmond behemoth asserts that one reason free software is of such high quality is that it violates more than 200 of Microsoft's patents. And as a mature company facing unfavorable market trends and fearsome competitors like Google (Charts, Fortune 500), Microsoft is pulling no punches: It wants royalties. If the company gets its way, free software won't be free anymore.

The conflict pits Microsoft and its dogged CEO, Steve Ballmer, against the "free world" - people who believe software is pure knowledge. The leader of that faction is Richard Matthew Stallman, a computer visionary with the look and the intransigence of an Old Testament prophet.

Supreme Court eases patent standards

Caught in the middle are big corporate Linux users like Wal-Mart, AIG, and Goldman Sachs. Free-worlders say that if Microsoft prevails, the whole quirky ecosystem that produced Linux and other free and open-source software (FOSS) will be undermined.

Microsoft counters that it is a matter of principle. "We live in a world where we honor, and support the honoring of, intellectual property," says Ballmer in an interview. FOSS patrons are going to have to "play by the same rules as the rest of the business," he insists. "What's fair is fair."

It's a breathtaking number. (By comparison, for instance, Verizon's (Charts, Fortune 500) patent suit against Vonage (Charts), which now threatens to bankrupt the latter, was based on just seven patents, of which only three were found to be infringing.) "This is not a case of some accidental, unknowing infringement," Gutierrez asserts. "There is an overwhelming number of patents being infringed."

Furthermore, FOSS has powerful corporate patrons and allies. In 2005, six of them - IBM (Charts, Fortune 500), Sony, Philips, Novell, Red Hat (Charts) and NEC - set up the Open Invention Network to acquire a portfolio of patents that might pose problems for companies like Microsoft, which are known to pose a patent threat to Linux.

So if Microsoft ever sued Linux distributor Red Hat for patent infringement, for instance, OIN might sue Microsoft in retaliation, trying to enjoin distribution of Windows. It's a cold war, and what keeps the peace is the threat of mutually assured destruction: patent Armageddon - an unending series of suits and countersuits that would hobble the industry and its customers.

hackers good for business?

It’s an interesting question, I feel, and one that seems to split both the IT security business and, well, business, asunder. I guess that some clarification is required before going any further, to save myself from needless big stick grief. I am not talking about the kind of penetration testing that allows security consultants to employ talented white hat hackers in an effort to expose holes within a security strategy and implementation. That kind of thing is obviously a given, and many large enterprises might not admit to it in public but it’s pretty common practise.

And there is the hook for my argument, the word public. The reason those enterprises do not go public with the holes that the hackers find is simply because it is nothing to do with us. They identify a weakness, they resolve the situation and reinforce the security infrastructure, the bad guys are kept out, the customers are not troubled by tales of the ‘we used to have a security problems but it’s all better now, honest’ variety. Now let’s take a look at a recent example where a marketing exercise, disguise it as public vulnerability research or an open approach to security all you will, at the end of the day it is still usually just a PR stunt, went wrong.

A security company undertook a high profile hacker contest in which a prize of $10,000 was put on offer for anyone who could successfully hack the Mac. Great, lots of cool publicity for that security company (but not from me, here, you will note) before the event, during it, and afterwards when one hacker managed to uncover a vulnerability in QuickTime for which a patch does not exist and collect the cash. What’s the problem with that? Well how about the resulting publicity leaving thousands of QuickTime users open to potential compromise because the company itself was not informed first and given the chance to block the hole before it was announced. The hacker would not do that, of course, because then he might not have got his money because Apple could have closed that particular door real quick for all anyone knew.

There can be no doubt that any kind of public vulnerability research effort will have the opportunity to turn sour, both for the company promoting it and the users of whatever software or service finds itself exposed to attack without any chance to defend itself. Throw a financial reward into the mix and the lure of the hunt, the scent of blood, is going to be too much for all but the most responsible of hackers. There really is no incentive to report their findings to the vulnerable company, and plenty not to.

Which is why, especially in the IT security business, there needs to be a code of conduct with regard to responsible disclosure. There, I have said it, and probably run the risk of being kicked out of the media reporters club as a direct result. After all, how are we meant to report on security vulnerabilities if we don’t know they exist in the first place? True, but along with a duty to report there also comes a duty to be responsible. So when I have uncovered such a story in the past, before I go to press I have always contacted the company concerned to give them a chance to respond. I gain because I get a quote to add to the story, they gain because they get a heads up at least 24 hours before the story breaks.

5 Future IT Jobs

1. Information steward
Reporting to the CIO, the information steward is responsible for how information is handled and stored across the company. The information steward determines who has read, write and copy access to information. This person is also in charge of how information is secured, backed up and archived. The position involves compliance with industry-specific regulations, as well as the new e-discovery rules for litigation. In an era of stolen laptops and exposed credit card numbers, the information steward is responsible for keeping the CIO out of the headlines.

2. Service delivery manager
The service delivery manager takes all the components of a company’s technology — networking, servers, software and storage — and delivers them to a business unit or a group of users as a service. These managers are responsible for setting prices and defining service-level agreements (SLA) for their services. They need to measure their performance against these SLAs and calm down unhappy customers. This job requires a jack-of-all-trades mentality: A service delivery manager is part project manager, part application developer and part contracting specialist.

3. Technology-business relationship manager
The technology-business relationship manager serves two masters: the CIO and the business-unit head. (Sometimes these folks have a desk in both departments to make sure they are working for both teams.) This manager helps the CIO understand the business perspective and serve business customers better, and jazzes up business executives about the capabilities that new technology can bring. Good communications skills and solid relationships throughout the company are key attributes of this manager. Here’s what this position shouldn’t be: a bottleneck.

4. Outsourcing relationship manager
The biggest change in IT shops in recent years is the rise of outsourcing. IT shops outsourcing domestically or offshore need someone on staff who knows how to manage these relationships. This position is best thought of as vendor management on steroids. An outsourcing relationship manager must hold outsourcing vendors to their agreements and fix problems when they arise. This person has to understand the technology links, communication and workflow between the company and the vendor, as well as how outsourcing affects the company’s overall business processes. Strong diplomatic and negotiating skills are essential

5. Mobile-application developer
Mobile-application development is as hot today as Web development was in the late ‘90s. This new discipline involves pulling together all the latest technologies — handheld devices, wireless networks, security, unified communications and collaboration tools — to support on-the-go executives, telecommuters and other virtual workers. Mobile-application developers need to understand the limitations of popular mobile devices and cell phones. Having a healthy paranoia about security is a plus. So is being a quick study: People who are too set in their ways will not be right for this fast-changing position.

Yahoo! - How It All Started...

Yahoo! began as a student hobby and evolved into a global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and purchase things. The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, started their guide in a campus trailer in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations. Eventually, Jerry and David's lists became too long and unwieldy, and they broke them out into categories. When the categories became too full, they developed subcategories ... and the core concept behind Yahoo! was born. The Web site started out as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" but eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Yahoo! itself first resided on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," while the software was lodged on Filo's computer, "Konishiki" - both named after legendary sumo wrestlers. Jerry and David soon found they were not alone in wanting a single place to find useful Web sites. Before long, hundreds of people were accessing their guide from well beyond the Stanford trailer. Word spread from friends to what quickly became a significant, loyal audience throughout the closely-knit Internet community. Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100 thousand unique visitors. Due to the torrent of traffic and enthusiastic reception Yahoo! was receiving, the founders knew they had a potential business on their hands. In March 1995, the pair incorporated the business and met with dozens of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. They eventually came across Sequoia Capital, the well-regarded firm whose most successful investments included Apple Computer, Atari, Oracle and Cisco Systems. They agreed to fund Yahoo! in April 1995 with an initial investment of nearly $2 million. Realizing their new company had the potential to grow quickly, Jerry and David began to shop for a management team. They hired Tim Koogle, a veteran of Motorola and an alumnus of the Stanford engineering department, as chief executive officer and Jeffrey Mallett, founder of Novell's WordPerfect consumer division, as chief operating officer. They secured a second round of funding in Fall 1995 from investors Reuters Ltd. and Softbank. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees. Today, Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet communications, commerce and media company that offers a comprehensive branded network of services to more than 345 million individuals each month worldwide. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and reaches the largest audience worldwide. The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence of Yahoo!'s clients. These services include Corporate Yahoo!, a popular customized enterprise portal solution; audio and video streaming; store hosting and management; and Web site tools and services. The company's global Web network includes 25 World properties. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo! has offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Canada and the United States.

DELL going to Open-Source?

The adoration for Linux that has been flowing from Round Rock lately is both refreshing and curious, and Dell has just taken its respect for the open-source OS to another level by signing on with Microsoft and Novell. While Linux users have long griped (and protested) about Microsoft, it's been no secret that Michael Dell has a thing for Ubuntu, and now it sounds like Dell will be "buying SUSE Linux Enterprise Server certificates from Microsoft," and moreover, "will be setting up a services and marketing program aimed at getting users of open-source platforms to switch to the new SUSE Linux offering." With the agreement inked, the Texas Powerhouse becomes the "first major systems provider to align with Microsoft and Novell in the collaboration," and judging by all the other recent Linux happenings in the Dell arena, we'd say this deal aligns perfectly with its current strategy.

One of my Favorite!

This Pretty much says it all, never annoy the geeks!

Buy It Here

Reasons NOT to work in IT

Reason #10 - Most Of Your Accomplishments Are Invisible

The computer guy never hears anyone tell him, “I just want to let you know … everything is working fine!”

The reality is that people call the computer guy when something is wrong.

As a computer guy, if you work really hard to make everything work the way that it should, and things work fine, then people believe you don’t do anything. Everything you manage to get working correctly or do perfectly will forever remain unnoticed by computer users. They’ll only ever notice that you do anything when something isn’t working correctly, and you are called upon to fix it.

Reason #9 - Every Conversation You Have Is Roughly The Same

When the computer guy dares to mention what he does for a living, the typical response is, “I have a question about my home computer…”

Or when the computer guy first hears about a widespread problem within the computer network he’s responsible for, he can barely begin to assess the problem before a dozen other people call to report the same problem.

Or when the computer guy explains a certain process on a computer to a user who is incapable of retaining the process, he will inevitably need to reinstruct the user of this same process — indefinitely.

Reason #8 - You’re An Expert Of Bleeding-Edge Technology Products, Aren’t You?


The computer guy often finds himself in situations where someone is asking him for advice on a pending investment of the technological variety.

“I heard about (some hardware or software product) that can do (something desirable) for me. I brought you these (advertisements/reviews/printouts) because I wanted your recommendation. Which would you buy?”

Although the inquiring person sincerely trusts the computer guy’s judgment over their own, in almost every instance the real objective of these meetings is to ensure their own immunity from making a risky purchase.

If it turns out to be a bad investment, and they cannot get (the hardware or software product) to do (anything desirable), then you will be their personal scapegoat — “But honey, the computer guy said I should buy it!”

Reason #7 - Your Talents Are Forcibly Undervalued

Thanks to the constantly declining price of new computers, the computer guy cannot charge labor sums without a dispute. If he asks to be paid what he is worth, he will likely be met with the “why not buy new?” argument.

That is, desktop computers are always getting smaller, faster, and cheaper. It’s possible to purchase a new desktop computer for under $400. If the computer guy spends five hours fixing a computer and wants $100/hour for his time, his customer will be outraged, exclaiming “I didn’t even spend this much to BUY the computer, why should I pay this much just to FIX it?”

Reason #6 - You’re Never Allowed A Moment’s Peace

The computer guy is so prone to interruption that he rarely finds an opportunity to work on his own problems. This is because:

Computers never sleep.
Computer problems aren’t scheduled.
Every problem takes time to diagnose.
The computer guy can only give one problem his full attention.
Each user believes their problem deserves attention now.
Consequently, the computer guy has a 24/7 obligation to keep critical computer systems running, while simultaneously juggling everyone’s problems. He’ll often need to forfeit any opportunities to tend to his own needs for the sake of others — because at any moment, of any day, he can be interrupted by someone who wants to make their problem his problem.

Reason #5 - People Ask You To Perform Miracles

The computer guy is often mistaken for someone who possesses the combined skills of an old priest and a young priest. I’ll sum this up easily by example:

“No, I really can’t recover any files from your thumb drive, even if you did find it after it passed through your dog.”

Reason #4 - Your Assumed “All-Knowing” Status Sets You Up To Let People Down

There is no common understanding that there are smaller divisions within the computer industry, and that the computer guy cannot be an expert in all areas. What makes things worse, is when the computer guy attempts to explain this to someone asking for help, the person will often believe that the computer guy is withholding the desired knowledge to avoid having to help.

This is somewhat related to the next reason:

Reason #3 - You Possess Unlimited Responsibility


The computer guy is expected to solve problems. It is difficult to determine the boundaries of that expectation.

Some of the oddest things that I’ve been asked to do include:

Use pirated software to undelete important company files.
Create an Intranet, after explaining I didn’t know how to.
Teach someone how to hide their pornography collection.
Solving problems can range from replacing batteries in a wireless keyboard to investigating why the entire building loses power at the same time every morning. Resolutions can necessitate weaving a 50-foot cable through a drop ceiling, or wriggling under a house on your belly to add an electrical outlet.

Reasons #4 and #3 boil down to this: no matter how often you want to play the role of a hero, there will always be circumstances that test the limits of your ability to be one. It’s difficult to judge when helping someone means doing something immoral, and it’s even harder to admit you are unable to solve someone’s problem — and chances are, that someone will view you as incompetent because you were unable to help them.

Reason #2 - A Life Of Alienation

People only talk to the computer guy when they need him to fix something. Also, when the computer guy approaches a user, they’ll hop up out of their chair under the presumption that he’s there to fix something — as if it would never be expected that he only wants to strike up a conversation.

The fact that the computer guy never gets a moment’s peace can also practically force him to withdraw into solitude. His co-workers don’t understand that he doesn’t want to hear about their computer problems during his lunch hour — he does that every other hour of the day. That’s why the computer guy eats lunch alone with his door closed, or goes out to eat every day — not because he’s unfriendly, but because he needs to escape the incessant interruptions.

Reason #1 - You Have No Identity

It’s an awful experience when the computer guy shows up at a neighbor’s doorstep with a plate of Christmas cookies, only to have the child who answered the door call out, “Mom, the computer guy is here!” He begs for an identity that is not directly associated with computers, but “the computer guy” label walks ahead of him — it simply cannot be avoided. I was given a name and I’d love to be addressed by it.

Having read these reasons, you may believe that I’m complaining. It’s true that I was upset with many aspects of my life as the computer guy, but I’m past the point of complaining.

I took a good hard look at my existence and realized that things were not likely to change in the line of work I had chosen. Instead of just complaining, I took action and began making positive changes in my life.

Working in the computer industry isn’t for everybody. It wasn’t for me. I’ve compiled my reasons for putting it behind me and placed them here, so that anyone who is unsatisfied with their life working in computers might recognize it’s not for them either.

Cryptography at its best...

It's always only a matter of time. A little less than a year after the first quantum cryptographic network was demoed, a group of researchers at MIT have announced a working implementation of a hack that's been around in theory since 1998 but never implemented. Skirting around ol' Wernie Heisenberg and that Principle of his, the team exploited quantum entanglement to read the encryption keys encoded in photon polarizations from their momentums, avoiding detection by either end -- in other words, doing what was once thought impossible by cryptographers. The system isn't perfect, however -- in this early incarnation it can only nab 40% of transmitted data before giving itself away, and more importantly, it requires the invention of a "quantum non-demolition box" before the attacker can be anywhere but the same room as the receiver, since right now both attacker and receiver need to be using the same photon detector. Sounds like that might put a damper on that whole "undetectable" thing. Still, the researchers sound upbeat -- they're saying the work proves that no secret is truly safe. We're just wondering if they're pushing MIT to rename their department SETEC ASTRONOMY