Feedback

Love us? Hate us? This is your opportunity to let us know how you feel about our Web site, the quality and quantity of the content, the layout, what you like and what really annoys you.

Give us your ideas. What kinds of article would you like to see that we aren't providing now? What are we doing that we shouldn't do? How do you think we can better serve you?

Please e-mail webFeedback@itworldcanada.com to submit a letter to the Web Editor.

One question, besides personal information what else will be on this "harmless" chip? Perhaps a GPS tracking device - finally a way to put EVERY citizen of the United States under virtual house arrest. Big Brother knows where and when you go. Now that's state of the art privacy!

Sounds like a promising technology but I bet it doesn't take long to find a way around it. Why doesn't the movie industry start releasing an alternative to theatres such as a high-quality, paid download option. Look at the popularity and profitability of iTunes. Give people an opportunity to pay for a newly released movie on demand (online). Right now the only option is pay at the theatre or download a pirated copy at home. The movie industry has to start taking better advantage of technology and actually listening to what consumers want. Give consumers a legal alternative and they might surprise you!

Or they could save even more money by discontinuing Macs altogether, and going to PCs. Theres nothing you can do on a Mac that you can't on a PC. Personal preference shouldnt really matter in an educational environment. Most of the major software suites are available for both PC and Mac, such as Adobe's graphics editing software. Therefore, students can learn the software on a PC and use it on their Macs at home if they have enough money to waste on a Mac.

Sorry, but I can't agree with the comments made by Carmi Levy in your article. The risk of something going wrong due to the DST change is much higher than during Y2K. By the time Y2K came around everyone was well prepared and had upgraded their system to handle the change. DST is catching people by surprise or at least has been ignored by most until the last minute. Due to the volume of devices and software to be patched, and the need to sequence some of the patching, there is a very good chance that something will go wrong. Fortunately, the impact of these failures will be slight. As Carmi Levy states, systems will not crash and airplanes will not fall from the sky but many people will be red faced embarrassed when they are late for appointments. While this may not be more than a slight annoyance to most, I suggest you ensure your company VIPS are aware of the risks and are well taken care of as far as having patches implemented and mobile devices that can handle the change. VIPS don't take kindly to being embarrassed or missing meetings.

I am uncomfortable with the light tone of this article. I work for a large multi-national firm, that uses both Notes and Exchange. We have been working on this DST issue for over six weeks now, testing the implications in our development environment, and have recently started changes in production.

During these tests, we discovered dozens of bugs with both the Lotus and the Microsoft DST update agents. We have been in steady contact with both companies, and getting new code from them. Something as simple as a pre-scheduled recurring meeting that shows up an hour late on a server that manages room resources, will cause that resource to decline the meeting due to potential scheduling conflicts. Seems like a small issue, until you factor in the cost and time associated with the helpdesk calls to resolve these.

Then there are the pre-scheduled business to business electronic transactions. These are typically scheduled on fairly tight timelines. An hour out may cause a transaction to fail, with financial and regulatory implications on either side.

Infrastructure systems like MQ could generate errors because a message appears to reach a hub an hour after it was sent, causing a session time out. Anything written in Java, that uses timezones for lookups will give an erroneous time unless patched. This isn't a problem with the application that was written, but the underlying Java environment.

Security logs will be skewed across servers that are patched and those that are not. Again, a trivial issue unless you are running hundreds of servers and trending incidents across them.

I agree that this is no Y2K, however I also believe that there has not been enough media attention to the financial cost implications of preparing for this government policy. I'm sure the costs that individual companies have invested in resolving this issue far outweighs the pittance they will gain in energy conservation, which was, after all, the initial goal of the policy.

My concern with this software is that Microsoft basically tried to copycat Mac's OS'X system. Customers are not aware when they purchase the package that it will cost them extra for upgrades. MAC OS'X cost CDN$149 and Microsoft Vista Ultimate costs above CDN$400.

Win XP Pro was stable but still had many security flaws. Windows Vista was released before it was finished without any concern for customer security (identity theft, spam, viruses, etc.) Mac OS'X is based on Unix which is the most stable, reliable and secure on the market.

In conclusion, Microsoft is really just pulling itself away from the customers by waiting five years to release a new version that is a cheap rip-off of Mac's six-year-old operating system - which as yearly major updates.

P.S. Mac's OS'X 10.5 due for release in April '07

Rick Govt, IT Specialist

During my twenty years as a teleworker, I assisted numerous corporations in developing telework technology strategies, and building, running and managing a distributed telework-based company for over seven years.

There were two major areas the article did not cover. The first are was the human psychology profile of effective teleworkers AND telework managers. Not everyone can or will be successful in either role based on their own profile, communications style and preferred workstyles.

The second area, which is critical, particularly for IT-based organizations is the ability to effectively use ALL forms of communications, i.e. voice mail, e-mail, web conferencing, teleconferencing, etc. Often, messages are mis-understood via e-mail and particularly if you are delivering a message as a manager. We would encourage corporations to develop programs to help managers and staff to develop skills to communicate, disregarding medium, and to also identify their own profiles geared to their corporate culture, style and values.

Roberta J. Fox, Director of the Canadian Telework Association and Senior Partner, FOX GROUP Telecom Consulting.

The idea that using chargeback will generate an understanding of the 'value' of IT is mistaken. It is merely a way of reallocating costs. Although critical to the operations of the company, the business ascribes zero to negative value to the provision of IT products and services. Get is right, and you're doing your job, get it wrong and you're out of here! Putting in a charge back system for a service that is ascribed zero value merely reinforces that IT is a cost. If IT wants to demonstrate its value, then it needs to show how it improves the business, competes and makes money. This is the only measure of value. And, even here, just providing a CRM system, for example, is not enough, you need to change how you go to market, serve customers and increase margins. Now you're talking value! Marketing your costs will not generate recognition of IT's value.

Blacklist Canada for what the U.S. says it is doing about piracy of software and games? I suggest that the U.S. clean out its own dirty closet before it condemns another country. Trade sanctions? What happened to the free trade we were supposed to have? The only people who benefited from the free trade agreement were the Americans. Many of us were put out of work. U.S., I say TAKE A BIG HIKE. No more bullying from you. We are not going to take it anymore.

To begin, I want to say that for the most part, this article offered some insights that are not often discussed. More specifically, about the attitudes of management towards internal users as being a security threat. Kudos for this insight. However, I must say that I strongly disagree with the statement, "The multi-function offering of UTMs might not be top of the line, but for small environments, they're the sweet spot right now."

I agree that small businesses can benefit from the installation of UTM appliances - this is certainly true. However, the wording here suggests that UTM might not be a viable option for larger, more sophisticated environments. I personally have been involved in the introduction of UTM appliances within the Canadian market and know for a fact that some of the country's largest corporations, universities and colleges, and Canadian Federal government departments are aggressively deploying and standardizing this type of technology. The benefits of this approach are significant: lessened integration requirements, less training, less management, greater co-ordination of security functionality. I believe by making a comment like this, the publication is doing a disservice to the advancement of IT Security theory and practice. Decision makers rely on advice from publications comprised of "experts" to help vet the multitude of options available.

This does not address how real people - as opposed to senior level execs - need to deal with e-mail. First, senior level execs don't have to deal with e-mail problems - their secretaries do. What others need to do is learn how to filter their e-mail appropriately, so they can deal with important stuff first, and less important e-mails later, or not at all.

Second, they need to avoid the compulsion to ANSWER all the e-mail they receive. Just because someone sends you an e-mail does not mean you need to reply. It's one thing if a potential client sends one, and quite another if your funny uncle George wants to let you in on the latest joke.

Lastly, if you're running Windows, be sure you have all the anti-virus and anti spyware software up to date. Better yet, switch to Linux or Mac.

I think that sometimes, we want a mobile phone to be just a mobile phone. Extra functionality has to be comparable in quality to other devices. For example, MP3 players and cheap digital cameras come in roughly the same quality and size as a mobile phone. However, would you really want to watch videos on a phone when you have a HDTV? I hate sending and reading e-mail through a tiny screen.

Cute ring tones? Those are about as annoying as car alarms. Just provide good service, and stop nickel and diming us to death! I think that when number portability arrives this year, we'll see some real price competition - not just bundles of gimmicks.

Many customers have accumulated many unresolved grievances, but did not change providers as they needed to keep their phone numbers. Mobile companies will be (they'd better be) working hard to retain those customers with value propositions, instead of bottom-drawer toys.

How far do we let copyright infringe on news dissemination? I can see the arguments where a work is published (book) and the author receives the profits from their work. However the public press is just that - PUBLIC. Once an article has appeared in one of the public media all copyright rights should be nul and void. Of course, attribution should always be made - no attempt should be made to plagarize, etc. But to prevent people from reading what has already been released to the public, preposterous!

One must wonder about TJX Companies Inc's corporate thinking. Understanding buying patterns is one thing, maintaining their customers' personal financial account information is quite another.

Dave Cole pointed out in the article: "It's going to happen at some point that someone will lose your data. Practice good hygiene with monitoring your financial accounts." But by maintaining detailed confidential information and perhaps worse still, in clear text, TJX opened the door to unnecessary and immitigable risk to "millions" of customers. A hacker's dream come true! Rules and penalties might have helped the unwitting customers of TJX, but perhaps some management changes and a good dose of litigation just might wake up the industry.

The group's concept of the lateral movement of the Virtual Braille device while keeping one's fingers implanted in its tactyle square is truly innovative and workable.

If the researchers are interested in working with end user testers, please feel free to have them contact me. When I joined IBM Canada Ltd. back in 1981 as a software development analyst, I was using an Optacon (optical to tactyle converter).

This device allows a user to scan a computer screen with a small hand-held camera equipped with a CRT (Cathode Ray Tube) lens with one hand, while keeping the other hand's index finger implanted in a tactyle square consisting of a 12 by 12 array of tiny pins which would vibrate as characters and images were scanned.

This technology could be classified as "Virtual Print", which back in those days was wonderful to have had. Although it was slow, it was accurate.

In comparison, the STRESS2 looks promising, much less straining on one's fingers and much easier to use. Once one learns to use the STRESS2 efficiently, one can read and work with linear text, as well as with tables, boxes, charts, etc. Once the STRESS2 is perfected, it will be well received and widely acclaimed by the visually-impaired community and yes, it should open many more doors to employment.

How can we make sense of this when experienced IT workers who are laid off cannot get work? I know for a fact that there are people born and raised in Canada or the U.S. who can't find work (I won't even touch the immigrant issue)!

I think that employers are too picky! If there truly is a shortage and I had to immediately fill a position, I would take the closest qualified candidate and re-train them if necessary!

On one hand we have government telling baby boomers not to retire early. On the other, companies are telling us that our job is now gone - enjoy your layoff - while we offshore to India and Malaysia.

A shortage? More like a glut on the horizon. Offshoring isn't to make up for attrition, it's to save headcount dollars. Unfortunately, corporate knowledge doesn't show on the books. But will cost much more down the road in inefficiencies, lost productivity and potential lost data.

I think IT is unique because it hasn't always been a male-dominated field, and because it is very much a meritocracy. Men and women in IT look to technical knowledge and peer relationship skills to garner respect.

Our IT department has the best diversity numbers in the company - a wide range of people apply and we just pick the best. Our diversity was great before anybody knew what IT was, and when there were no stereotypes about the profession. Females thought it was a good career then.

But now, perceptions are such that females don't consider IT as a career, resulting in fewer graduates to hire. It's the public perception that needs to change.

This code of conduct approach should be applicable to governments as well. With no control nor access to information, the government can retain any information it wants on an individual - accurate or not. This makes a code of conduct solely for NGOs worthless.

How about just saying that's the way the software, service and devices come - the same as any other country. Gandhi said "No one is free until we all are." The move is designed to make a few people feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Before you can point fingers at others, there are lots of examples of where we have taken too much for granted to seemingly protect our own investment. A recent example is IE7 which requires proof of a valid XP license. Having been in the software business for longer than Microsoft, I can appreciate why. But I do object to the probing of a complete system to find out more than is required to validate Certificate Information.

On install, IE7 gives the local machine registry an very extensive work out - Machine Unique IDs, Session Information, System Architecture, Processor Type and Model, Logon Server, Internal Domain Name, Machine Name, TCP/IP setup and over 4,000 other registry events.

It seems to me that we need to agree to a code of conduct among ourselves before we judge others.

I sometimes find it extremely difficult to believe there is a huge labour shortage in the Canadian IT industry. I went back to school in 1999, came out with a diploma from TriOS, and five certifications: MCP, CNA, CUSA, A+, and Net+. Six months after that I found myself working for Scotiabank, and then for IBM Global Services on the WAN as an analyst. It's been 2-1/2 years since my IBM job, and I still find myself out of the industry.

During interviews, I find employers don't care for soft skills and business sense. At least the interviewer - around 25-32 years old who doesn't possess those skills - doesn't. They ask for exact technical skills, which are often acquired by doing the exact job.

I am now 52 years old. I find that in this industry, most companies are looking for young university grads whom they feel they can "mould".

I live in a town (Kitchener-Waterloo) where many IT openings are advertised, many of which go unfilled for a long time. The talent that sits in front of employers goes unnoticed.

I left a position in a company to go back to school to attain proper training in this industry. Now I wonder if I should have.

Makeover: Yes. Rethinking hiring process, changing the budget to focus on retrofit, instead of the exact fit: YES.

The best to all the guys who find themselves on the outside looking in.

Excellent article, Scott Spanbauer. Thank You. I have been in the Hi-Tech arena all my working life and am still amazed at Microsoft's lack of intutitiveness around their products. Simple "how to" instructions, such as those detailed in your article make it easier to wage the "never-ending" battle against threats from within and outside my internet-connected PC. I often wonder how ordinary people - particularly the elderly - cope.

For two out of the three problems, there is a solution you did not mention.

Get rid of Windows. I've never had a virus or other malware problem on my main surfing machine. I run a mature desktop version of Linux.

Is it an IT shortage or that people are not getting paid enough for this skill? As a contractor I've seen the rates drop over the last few years. Lower rates get less skilled people.

If there is such a shortage, why are skilled IT people in Canada unable to find jobs? Off the top of my head, I know of two highly skilled IT people that are out of work and have no future prospects.

Where are these jobs they keep talking about? Funny, most articles like this don't say that. Is it because headhunters are trying to get cheaper labour offshore? Thats just great, but do these offshore workers know about business and manufacturing, etc. or are they coders?

What does the industry really want? Lets get the full story. I suspect the industry wants highly skilled IT professionals for free or the lowest price possible. As they can't find that, they have to look elsewhere.

For many reasons, the IT industry has lost credibility among young people entering university: the fallout from the "dot bust", the "not cool" label that "geeks" have, the layoffs that their parents endured, and the fact their parents have been reading about all the technology jobs going "offshore" to India, China and other such places.

The answer, as I see it, is a strategic approach to staffing that includes multiple solutions. As companies will not be able to "own" huge IT departments, they will need to hire and cultivate a core group of employees to manage their IT requirements.

Outsourcing and "offshoring" will be a reality for companies that want to ensure their continued operations.

Companies may need to bring in hired help on an as-and-when-required basis. We will also see more importing of talent. The great work done by the ICTC (formerly Human resource Council of Canada) gives Canada a competitive edge with our progressive immigration policies.

I also think that the retiring baby boomers issue is a little bit of "smoke and mirrors". Will they retire? They probably will retire from their jobs and take a pension. But then they will be available for consulting and seasonal work, so that "intellectual property" will not necessarily be lost.

As a staffing professional I think the next ten years will provide a challenge for the Canadian industry but by working together with its supplier community, efficient structures can be built that will retain our competitiveness.

I have worked in the IT industry for 14 years, and have been trying to find a job in Canada for the last 5 years. So far, I have had no success. I have New York experience but no Canadian experience. I find that Canadians are very prejudiced towards non-Canadians. In the end, this prejudice will hurt their IT industry.

This article illustrates quite well that the IT industry is acting blindly, with no longterm view. They fired highly skilled workers during the Dot com bust even if they were not related to the Web. They outsourced key jobs to India and often refused to hire and invest in beginners. Now, they are going to pay the price: lose a lot of money and market share. But the worst of all is they probably will not learn from there mistakes.

Perhaps CIBC should divert some of its obscene profits from overseas, tax-free holdings into data security and customer service.

I'd suggest that Microsoft consider providing home users and developing countries free or significantly reduced operating system licenses with no reduced functionality. Their real bread and butter comes from their corporate customers who are not going to risk their business trying to nickle and dime them on Vista and Office. If microsoft really wants to combat piracy they should give the software away to the youngsters and home users who are downloading their software from P2P networks like bit torrent.

One factor that wasn't mentioned in this article is financial incentive. Highly experienced IT professionals would probably have the U.S. and Europe higher on their list of target destinations due to the apparent higher pay in those markets. This makes it hard for Canadian companies to retain IT specialists, particularly since this is a highly mobile career choice with few international boundaries. An image makeover is certainly needed but Canadian employers also need to attract qualified and post-graduate staff by: (a) Assessing whether the average IT pay rates are competitive on the international market (in real terms of course) (b) Emphasizing the (under-estimated) social and lifestyle benefits available to IT professionals in major Canadian business centres such as Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, etc.

One has to remember that the BSA is not an independent third party. The Business Software Alliance is a syndicate of software vendors. Their authority is invoked under the threat of potential copyright violations. They are not required to prove that you are in breach of copyright - you are "required" to prove that you are not. The BSA membership is made up of: Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Avid, Bentley Systems, Borland, CA, Cadence Design Systems, Cisco Systems, CNC Software/Mastercam, Dell, Entrust, HP, IBM, Intel, McAfee, Microsoft, Monotype Imaging, PTC, RSA (The Security Division of EMC), SAP, SolidWorks, Sybase, Symantec, Synopsys, The MathWorks, & UGS.

As a former HP Employee, I was proud to read that HP hired Carly as their CEO. She brought corporate experience from the telecommunications industry to HP, which was of value as IT and telecom converged. She also successfully helped the company navigate through the Compaq acquisition.

My team and I at FOX GROUP applaud Carly’s vision, leadership, and professionalism during her tenure at HP. As I belong to a minority group in IT and telecom - a technical woman, who has installed, managed and supported complex voice and data networks - I understand the environment within IT and telecom. Women are different and bring a different perspective to business. Our differences can be our biggest strength if we understand how to apply them within the corporate environment. We are gravely concerned about the declining enrolment of young women in IT, engineering and science programs, and actively participate in career days throughout Ontario at the public and high school level.

We believe if young girls hear from those of us who have built a successful career and personal life within ICT by leveraging our 'female' qualities, while also being able to learn and succeed within the 'male world', this will encourage them to choose this path.

Lastly, we believe it is important for both genders to provide mentorship to encourage the next generation – not just to choose the ICT industry - but also to mentor staff for future growth and career development.

Technically any word that's not in the dictionary can be copyrighted because it is not "public domain". Therefore Cisco - if it does indeed have copyright ownership of the name - is within their rights to sue anyone else who uses the same name no matter what the product is. That said, I do favour Apple in this battle, and since they have the popular 'iPod', I can understand their desire to name their phone the "iPhone". I hope Cisco appreciates this and comes to an agreeable settlement.

As a content producer and distributor, I can attest that there are many options to stream your media. However, the key is to work with a professional who has been there and done that... the cost of his or her expertise will more than offset the time, expense and potential additional costs due to losses and other factors.

As a WSI franchisee, I have to strongly disagree with Harpointer's comments about our franchisees being constrained. There are hundreds of products and services available within our private e-marketplace. If one supplier's products are sub-standard, there are many other options available to us. AIS Media does not have anything close to the services that are at our fingertips. I have been a WSI consultant for 14 months and my business is profitable and continues to flourish - and that's true of the businesses of other WSI consultants.

WSI has been ranked the number one Internet franchise in the world for many years - a claim that AIS Media certainly cannot make.

It is so satisfying to read about technology benefiting people. Thanks for publishing this article.

I like hands-free calling and use it, as suggested in the article, mostly as a backup to my cell. My wife, on the other hand, dislikes the technology. She has a high voice and the hands-free phone does not understand her commands. I have noticed this occasionally when trying to make a call and my kids are at the back of the car making noise. The device keeps saying "pardon." I don't believe my wife has ever successfully made a call with the hands free on star.

Has anyone else complained about this problem?

I was in the market for a notebook and this time around opted for a Macpro. (I've been a PC user for more than two decades).

I want a stable system that's not afflicted by viruses, security flaws, blue screen error messages and so on. The Mac OS X, I believe, has the harmony and integration I am looking for, therefore, I've finally taken the plunge. For native PC applications, I will still need my PC, but plan to integrate WIN XP via Parallel and can still have both.

My Macpro Core 2, with 2GB of memory and a 160GB hard drive should arrive soon, and I am really excited. I'm also eagerly awaiting the arrival of Leopard OS 10.5 and the integration it offers.

What a price we would all pay, if the concept of open computing were to disappear for the sake of the bottom line. The freedom to exchange ideas is of paramount importance to civilized society, even when those ideas are most readily expressed in source code.

George Goodall is wrong. Technology can never be used to "enforce" business processes; technology can only support business processes. It is the job of management to enforce business processes. There's an old saying that I think best illustrates this: "Never underestimate the ability of fools to defeat a fool-proof system."

Cache, cookies and history files are all obvious items that need to be cleaned, but doing that is not enough. Yet another file that needs to be removed is the "index.dat." It's harder to get at but contains a great deal of personal information.

Editor's note: Some free tools out there allow you to analyze and delete your Index.dat files. One of these is Index.dat Analyzer 1.6. This application prevents anyone trying to read your index.dat files to ascertain your Web surfing habits. It displays index.dat files found in your Internet Explorer cache. It also has a simple user interface and includes a filtering feature that allows you to selectively remove items, or delete all.

The article made no mention of software as a service (SaaS). This technology trend - fuelled by the likes of Google and embodied in services like Google Docs - has become a tidal wave and has Microsoft in the hot seat.

The news that there is an active virus now concerns us all who use the Skype service.

I've been hit with phishing spam from Rock Phish twice. Once posing as CitiBank and once as Wells Fargo. I traced the Wells Fargo link to the Web site of a bank, which had been hacked and a fifth level sub-directory created where a mySQL database was storing the data bank account data. I warned the ISP, the concerned bank, Wells Fargo, and Interpol but never heard from anyone, and have no idea if anything was done except that the URL was gone the next day. Which could mean Rock Phish had gathered the data and erased the evidence. With this apparent lack of concern I fear that Rock Phish will never be stopped.

Ottawa is slow to the process. The company I work for installed one of these Nortel WLAN 2300 systems at the General Motors Centre (Oshawa Generals) last month and the Montreal Canadiens are installing one too. It works very well even though the Generals are not even scratching the surface of its capabilities. The analyst is correct though in that the biggest gains will be productivity gains for the building rather than for fans.

It is good to see our tax money being put to good use in fighting criminals!

If so much could be done with $3 million, imagine what could have been accomplished with the $2 billion wasted on the firearm registry.

Seems to me our privacy commissioners need to be on top of this. They need to ensure that:

*Nothing is encoded (other than information necessary to the credit card function), without the users consent;

* Users have a way to confirm what information - other than personal information necessary to complete card transactions - is encoded on their card (perhaps, a Web portal where they can view this information would serve this purpose).

Also, if smart cards are really that secure, there is no reason why one smart card cannot be my Visa, MasterCard, Amex, driver's licence, department store credit card, debit card, health card and - if governments ever get their act together - my passport.

Maybe it can replace the 10+ cards I have to carry, which has been one of my pet peeves for more than 30 years.

I think most would agree that it takes money to run religious organizations. Hydro and heating oil aren't free. That's fair enough.

But I also observe that religious institutions are trying to reinvent themselves in the face of declining interest in traditional Western religious practice.

Historically the tide started shifting well over a hundred years ago, but it picked up speed with the return of troops from WWI.

It's not a new phenomenon. For some it means making services more entertaining with stress on contemporary music and charasmatic speakers. For others it means marketing campaigns. For yet others it means providing daycare, sports programs, or social services.

Sometimes the new, nearly secular flavour of their mission becomes so dominant that outsiders can forget that the Young Mens' Christian Association [YMCA] or Salvation Army are primarily religious organizations.

More and more, religious organizations seem to resemble business enterprises, commercial service providers or political machines. Electronic debit is just one more step in that direction. Money starts to look like an end rather than a means.

As religious institutions reinvent themselves, society will reinvent its way of interacting with them. And I suspect we will not see their tax exempt status last for long.

One other reason that I abandon shopping carts is simply that, in order to comparison shop, I need to go through the order processing steps to get the final cost, including taxes, shipping, etc.

Once I have that number, I know whether buying online from the particular vendor is a good deal. Because I do comparison shop online, somewhat more than half of all the carts I fill are abandoned.

It is wonderful news that sanity has prevailed and the Government has decided to overrule the CRTC's decision.

VoIP will at some point flow through the Internet, which is public domain and hence should not be regulated as is done in the rest of the world. The CRTC has just lost the justificaton for its existence.

Microsoft now has a single point of control in the Linux market from which it can attack other competing Linux vendors by tying them up in court until they either concede or go bankrupt. It is a technique major corporations, including Microsoft, have used before to eliminate the competition - and I see every indication of the same attitude and approach in the statements of Microsoft in this case. Sadly Novell was either too naive or too greedy to care. In the end, it may find itself swallowed by the Microsoft leviathan.

It is unquestionably wrong for the so-called 'independent' privacy commissioner to be endorsing a specific product (i.e. Microsoft). The independence of her office is now in question. It will be interesting to see if the marketplace has been affected by her support of a specific vendor's products. Cavoukian needs to retract this endorsement and let the IT marketplace find its own solutions to problems.

What is Microsoft thinking? With its increased security measures (updates requiring authentication, possible limit of one motherboard change per license), not only is Microsoft risking increased piracy (which is more rampant now than it was for operating systems like Windows 98) they are also risking residential and commerial sales.

The article implies that COBOL is an old language that many new programmers do not wish to learn. This is probably the case. However it also suggests that COBOL executes only in a "Green" screen environment. This is not true.

I am a developer of COBOL accounting software packages. I have a complete suite of products - including Receivables, Payables, General Ledger, Order Entry, Inventory - written in a COBOL language supplied by Acucorp Inc.

These COBOL packages are written for Windows graphical screens, offering the full complement of GUI features. They are able to execute on a UNIX mainframe in the graphical world using a thin client interface; or in a "green" screen; on a Windows NT Network, on IBM AIX systems and on Linux.

They work with simple ISAM (Indexed Sequential Access Methodfile) structures, or a variety of database systems, (including Oracle, Informix, Microsoft SQL, Sybase, or DB2). The ISAM files may be configured to be ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) compliant.

These applications can be deployed on a distributed TCP/IP network using file server technology. You can use COBOL to write CGI applications. You can call COBOL programs from Java to link newer technology to existing legacy code. You can also call C programs from COBOL ones, and vice-versa.

To summarize, yes I agree that there are a lot of legacy systems using COBOL, and they may be "trapped" in their "Green" screen environment. However, there are versions of COBOL available today, that allow you to move away from these dinosaur systems without too much difficulty.

This article's author Katherine Spencer Lee writes: "Unfortunately, the job seeker I mentioned previously was seeking a position as a database administrator but had no hands-on experience with the latest version of Oracle, which most of the hiring managers he met with considered essential."

Why can't she just admit the hiring managers are wrong?

Learning latest version of a product when you already have years of experience with the previous version is a relatively easy. It's knowledge of the business/application domains that's crucial.

And yet the article still emphasizes presentation skills and people skills.

Do we want to hire technology experts or salepersons/speakers?

It is evident that the powers that be have not thought through and analyzed the problem and the solutions. The cost of energy is still relatively cheap in Canada and Ontario, and I contend that Ontario Hydro as well as the local utilities are out of control.

Simple things such as co-generation, selecting proper utility voltages to reduce transformer sites and living within the means of the paying public are not business practices recognized by these Utilities. An example is the buying spree for new vehicles by Toronto Hydro when the North York and Toronto Hydro were merged.

Thousands of users will not care about smart meters because it's not worth worrying about a few dollars a year, and they are not going to change their lifestyle.

Also, the plan is not to charge the homeowner similar to industry where demand and power factor correction is rewarded, but to charge a higher rate at key points during the day/night, regardless of efficiency of use, and no reward for reduced use of energy other than having to pay for the "smart-meter".

It is interesting that when all the summer recreational (cottages) facilities shut down for the winter months, the very intelligent and expensive "smart-meters" will be idle with nothing to record. Thus, Hydro is going to invest and then cause the customer to repay them for the purchase of meters that are only used for 5 to 7 months a year.

There's also the issue of the infrastructure necessary to remotely monitor millions of "smart-meters" that cannot at present be connected to any radio device similar to the intranet/Internet process undertaken by Toronto Hydro.

Looks like another boondoggle to me. But I should not worry. The utility will find a way to create the necessary infrastructure for these "smart-meters" and make a few more people rich in the process.

Then give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to Open Source the things that are Open Source. The software folks should be able to protect what is theirs to protect. The consumers then will choose whether to accept it or not. Global in scope, Open Source is a viable option and the consumer will ultimately decide.

It is quite remarkable that the R&D academic community have been able to sustain the notion that research is essential to our prosperity. According to surveys by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and others, only six per cent of new businesses use a new technology, while another six per cent use some technology. A whopping 88 per cent of new businesses use no technology, and yet small businesses are the job creation engines of our western economies.

Andrew Rowsell-Jones hits the mark when he writes: "What [a] business really cares about is not systems, it's payoff." Recognizing that IT projects deliver business benefits is an important first step. However, it is critical for enterprises to move beyond the use of ad hoc approaches for benefits management. Instead, enterprises should use robust tools and techniques to identify:

* Required project outcomes(including intermediate outcomes, final business outcomes, and contributions towards strategic outcomes).

* Related, non-project initiatives essential to ensuring successful achievement of the desired results; and

* Assumptions and risks that could compromise the realization of the benefits.

This is an area where IT managers in Canada got in first. The world-leading methodology for benefits realization was invented in Montreal and Alberta in the early 1990s and is described in detail in "The Information Paradox" by John Thorp.

I have been a resident of Oakville Hydro for several years now and I am quite happy to see they will finally be using delivery bills over the Internet. I have also been a user of Epost, which is Canada Post's site, to pick up all of my ebills. This site is extremely good, it is simple and intuitive.

I've voted with my wallet... I no longer purchase Sony or Sony BMG products... I purchase their competitors products.

I hope people reading this article will sign our petition aimed at convincing the Canadian government to pass laws to protect us from this type of harmful malware.

Shouldn't the money collected through the proceeds of selling pirated software be given back to the un-knowing customers of his company?

It seems both the software title owner, and the customers who bought the software are the big losers, and again the government is collecting at everyone's expense.

Yeah sure! Last week I had two Dell deliveries messed up.

The one meant for Winnipeg went to Calgary. The one for Toronto came to Winnipeg.

This just goes to show that Dell is not letting its customers down.

Most of Dell's misfortunes - negative customer experiences, product recalls, the SEC probe, lagging product design and so on - have been blown out of proportion by the media.

This is Dell's re-invention, for sure. Even more than that, it's an affirmation that the best is and will always remain the best.

I experienced Dell's "extraordinary customer experience" just yesterday.

The laptop I have is 13 months old, and so far the keyboard and the battery have failed.

I called them yesterday about the battery. It's a couple of weeks past the warranty period, so the technician told me I would have to purchase a new one.

I asked him to put me through to someone in sales. He did so and also told me to give the agent a number so I wouldn't have to repeat the verification process. In sales, I got a lady and she started the verification process over again. I offered her the number given to me by tech support, but she said she knew of no such number and I would have to verify my information.

I told her all I wanted was a price on the battery. I would not be buying it now. She said I would still have to verify all the information or she couldn't help me. I asked if I could find the price of the battery on the site and she said yes.

I asked if I needed to verify anything if I found it on the site and she said no. I then tried to ask her why I needed to go through the verification process if I sought the same information on the phone. But she insisted she couldn't help me unless I answered all her questions first. So I hung up.....

I'm not going to buy from Dell (Dell Hell as the techs here refer to it as) if I don't have to now.

I find Microsoft's reaction to the sactions somewhat of an engima. Fines were imposed on Microsoft for breaking EU laws.

In July I read Microsoft asked that these fines be reduced be reduced or eliminated. On the same day another article, related how Microsoft had filed 26 new lawsuits against various companies for software piracy.

Perhaps the list of companies who Microsoft is suing -- a lot more than 26 -- should ask their fines to be reduced or eliminated too. Why should Microsoft be "let off the hook" when others are not? Isn't breaking the law an offense no matter who does it?

I have worked in IT for 10 years now. I find the legislation in BC actually hurts workers more than it helps them.

In part, the problem is that it gives employers licence to "politely ask" for workers to do overtime, but does not provide workers the right to refuse.

Overtime should be a choice, not an expectation. For some workers, it's this inability to refuse overtime that has caused them to leave the industry, and I believe studies may prove the loss of IT talent in BC a result of the legislation.

Upon hiring, workers should have the choice to negotiate their contract with or without possible overtime, and legislation should support workers who make a choice either way.

This is a very informative article. Interesting aspects of the WiFi systems are provided. How exactly will the SSID be done using a cell phone?

First class article - posesses the fundamental ingredients : Integrity, creditability and transparency. Refreshing !!!

"Offering connection speeds of potentially seven megabits per second..." Since this is the "g" flavour of 802.11, you may as well say potentially "54" mbps.

Service providers have been gulling people for years with nominal vs real-world bandwidth. I'm amazed you guys are now helping a new entrant pull the same stunt. The last thing we need is more numbers that undermine credibility.

Isn't it time to take a look at the collapse of employment in the IT industry and perhaps admit that the people directing university students away from IT careers may be right?

Enrollment in IT seems to have dropped by at least 50 per cent, which means a marked decline in IT graduates in the past several years.

The reason for this collapse is obvious: five years after the dot-com collapse, there is a surplus of IT workers, and this despite the fact that thousands have left the industry.

So what IT worker shortage are we talking about? An IT industry employment collapse is what's really happening.

Apple has released a beta of software that will allow its new Intel-based Macintosh desktops and laptops to run Microsoft's Windows XP OS natively, as well as Mac OS X....

"Boot Camp" software creates a hard drive partition for Windows XP and lets users select between the two operating systems at startup. It's available now as a free trial beta, and it will be included in the next major version of Mac OS X Version 10.5, or "Leopard," due late this year...."

Umm-- if this story had been released in March or April it would have been news. But in mid-August? Boot Camp has already released a 1.1 upgrade version (though it's still in beta). Nothing in the story is wrong, but it's several months late in being news.

I just read that AT&T is the latest e-commerce outfit to be hacked and have some 19,000 credit card numbers stolen.

Question: what sort of Mickey Mouse outfit stores credit card numbers online? It's dumb things like this that cause resistance among customers.

Good article.

I will add that the CRTC has been seriously negligent in not providing a guaranteed QoS mandate to cell and Internet users. I waited a week to have my phone service company provide the required adjustments/repairs in order to have my Internet provider re-connect my Internet connection.

I get my TV reception guaranteed but not my cell/Internet services? That's a bit backward in priorities isn't it? The Telcos point fingers at the ISPs and the ISPs point fingers at the Telcos. The cell/Internet users are literally stuck in the middle with no option but to sit and wait and fume.

Cell and Internet connections impact financial, health, emergency, and family commitments etc... Why does the CRTC guarantee TV service but not cell/Internet service? I would like them to tell me.

Your article "Teens target for creative recruitment" is confusing.

Throughout most of the article, you talk about the IT skills shortage. Then you have a paragraph that talks about the Intuit study which shows a decline in the market for IT-related jobs in Alberta.

So if the market is declining, shouldn't also the enrolment at colleges and universities?

I don't understand the correlation between the Intuit study and the article.

I find it ironic that the article about the high demand for 'combo' IT/Business people is placed near another article that profiles how overwork can kill people.

Most North American companies I've worked in are looking for 'combo' people (PM/BA, IT/Business) because they have laid off significant amounts of their workforce and are now pumping the people they do hire to deliver the results of at least two people.

In my case, my workload went up 600% after round four of layoffs at one company. After that, it was a no brainer to make an exit and find less demanding work for the sake of my health.

Although there is validity in the concept of having customer-facing techies who are smooth enough to keep customers on track, I suspect that the main motivator for a 'combo' hire is pure profit -without regard for the health and well-being of the people who are expected to over-produce on a daily basis.

If you take a percentage of the population of people who die from overwork in North America, I'll bet it is very close to the same percentage of Chinese discussed in this article.

I am a recovering workaholic. In my teens I often held as many as four jobs, sometimes sleeping in transit from one job to another, working day and night.

I really believed that the harder and longer I worked, the better a person I was. The same pattern persisted when I married and had a family, and also when - after many years in the private sector - I took a government job. There too I worked overtime, and served on multiple committees.

My health began to deteriorate and began to suffer from depression, generalized anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorders. I did, however, have the courage to listen to my doctor and face my demons. I started medication, took stress leave, and enrolled in a cognitive therapy program to realign my core values. I have had one relapse since, but knew enough to seek help and get back on track. Life is better now, but I must always be on guard not to slip back into my workaholic habits. I put my health first, then my family, then my job, then my community at large. Seems simple, but for me sometimes it is still a struggle.

I hope, as a society, we become wiser and shed our "work faster,harder,longer" mentality. Overwork, "the silent scourge", is a social and mental desease that we as humanity need to eradicate if we are to survive as a species.

We at Huawei understand that this incident has raised general concern over work-life balance.

As a responsible company, we continue to dedicate significant resources to providing a sound staff welfare program and quality working environment to promote a healthy balance between work and life for our employees.

Since the tragic death of one of our employees from viral meningeal encephalitis, Huawei has been working with its managers in all divisions to review company overtime and evaluation policies and to ensure proper implementation of these policies.

As Huawei grows, our corporate policies and systems are maturing and becoming more efficient.

This is resulting in improved working environments, more systematic work processes, and better human resource benefits that are in line with international benchmarks.

We advise all staff to adopt a healthy lifestyle, and strike a good work-life balance. We again extend our sincere condolences to the family and friends of Xinyu Hu.

Sounds to me like the Cape Breton police are on a boondoggle reinventing the wheel, developing a system that will probably never get used anywhere else.

Cool for the students, great for IBM to polish its image, and to get Websphere in front of all those future IT folks. But who's going to maintain and enhance this system through the SDLC and who will pay? How does this system interface to other police systems?

The bitter irony of this story is that the late Mr. Xinyu died doing research and development on the technologies that were intended to make working life easier.

Technology was supposed to be the great liberator. Shorter work weeks were to be the consequence of faster, more accurate work. Instead, we see soccer moms tethered to BlackBerries and Wi-Fi at the cottage.

In my opinion, we've allowed ourselves to adapt to an unhealthy attitude about work. More is definitely not better.

The real issue here is not the supposed underlying skill shortage that is bringing retention issues to the forefront. It's that IT employers are not interested in hiring anybody over 40 - Everybody wants experienced employees but guess what - it usually comes with age! I am currently well employed so this is not sour grapes. However, I have been for a number of phone interviews over the last few years and the prospective employers have been very excited about my experience until it becomes evident - during the discussion - that I'm over 40. Then - silence and "Thanks but we'll let you know if we are interested".

I live on Bowen island, 20 minutes by ferry to West Vancouver, British Columbia. This news is very exciting to our business community. I am president of our local Chamber of Commerce, which has a membership of more than 120 business serving a population of 3,700 people. Paperless banking cannot come fast enough for Bowen Island!

Other than the issue of 'morale' mentioned in the article, it doesn't appear that this technology, which looks promising, makes much business sense to the school. If they were spending $10,000 -15,000 every year, according to Rush, and a three-year license for 600 systems, at $128.95 per license, would total 77,370 - $25790.

Using this technology is costing them an extra $10,000 -15000 per year. They would do better just replacing stolen laptops.

North America is becoming an increasingly integrated economy where best practices in securities regulation and corporate accountability will eventually be adopted by Canadian regulators.

According to data published by Standard and Poors, the New York Stock Exchange is home to 13.5 trillion dollars of capitalization. By comparison, the Toronto Stock Exchange is home to approximately $600 billion. So whose regulatory approach will have the most influence, the mouse or the elephant?

Essentially investment does not flow to the lowest common regulatory denominator, but to areas that produce the highest rate of return with least risk. The financial success of Wall Street is a testimony to this reality.

The US SEC is currently reviewing the cost impact that the control sign-off provisions of SoX are having in their small and medium size businesses.

However the regulator's intention is to streamline the requirement, not to eliminate it. I predict that Canada will adopt the US SEC approach on internal control "sign-offs", including any legal modifications that their regulators will introduce.

There are implications for Canadian CIO's. Prudent IT management must be mindful of SoX certification requirements when they design, implement and manage Canadian MIS systems They should work with their accountants to identify critical control points throughout their system(s) and ensure that the systems can be readily verified by independent auditors.

I am a 16-year old who uses the computer a lot. The U.S. Department of Justice says certain behaviours could be taken as "warning signs" that a child may be communicating online with a sexual predator. I disagree.

The behaviours cited by the DOJ include:

"A child who spends large amounts of time online, particularly between the hours of 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. when their parents may still be at work."

I know many people who spend hours a night online, on instant messengers and in chat rooms. Most, if not all of them, are talking to other friends. A child spending a large amount of time does not indicate he or she is in contact with a sexual predator.

"A child has pornography on his or her computer, because predators often send their victims pornography to engage them in sexual discussions."

Thats a laugh and a half. Firstly, pornography is so widely available on the Internet these days that plenty of teens have porn on their computers.

They're young, they're hot blooded, and they know how to hide it from their parents.

"A child receives or makes phone calls to unfamiliar numbers; a child receives mail, gifts or packages from unknown sources."

This is the worst one of them all. There's absolutely no way a parent can keep track of all of their children's friends.

I have hundreds of phone numbers on my cell phone and my parents are probably familiar with about 10 of them.

I'm just trying to point out that not only are "tips" like this not helping parents protect their children, they're probably making things worse. The first thing most parents will do when they read this is restrict their children from online communication. As a teenager, I know that when we're not allowed to do something, we'll just find a better way to do it behind our parents' backs. That, to me, poses a much higher risk for kids interacting with predators.

Calgary has a huge and active Linux user community that would be more than willing to help the IT folks at Tourism Calgary get up to speed on Linux. Why is a non-profit entity spending huge sums of money on foreign software when far less expensive, and locally developed, solutions are available?

If I were the Indian government, I would rather monitor these Web sites and blogs carefully, to try to garner intelligence that would indicate what the terrorists plans might be. Shutting them down just drives them underground.

We in the IT world have heard this all before. As long as there are consultants willing to work for salaries that are below market value, IT skills and experience will continue to be underrated. So these projections really make no difference.

I found this article disconcerting, to say the least.

If security practices at Canadian firms are so bad that they have to resort to banning iPods at work, then heaven help them.

Shame on Sun Microsystems to commission a study that seems to support this practice.

Soon you'll read about a study done on corporate violence caused by forced listening to Muzak because iPods were banned at work.

Laptops require maintenance to remove lint, hair and other fugitive debris ingested by the air intake and exhaust process used to remove the excess heat. It is amazing to see the stuff that gets sucked into a laptop's fan ducting.

However, I have not read anywhere what kind of preventative maintenance is required to keep the system operational, and in fact the screws used by the manufacturers are odd "star" types.

Then there is the issue of the conductive grease used to maintain a path of least resistance for the energy given off by the CPU to the heat sink during operations. Where does the average user get replacement grease?

People forget that the fan is in the laptop for a reason and when they balance it on a pillow or on their knee, they are setting up a scenario that can only lead to failure by blocking the fan input/outputs. Arcing can occur as an electronic device fails. This is the probable cause of the dust and contaminants within the laptop igniting. Once there is flame, the plastics and other components contribute to the fire. Naturally the combustibility of anything the laptop sits on is a contributing factor.

So, to reduce the potential for a laptop igniting, keep the thing clean and don't block the intake and exhaust ports by body parts, blankets or pillows.

This is a minimum amount of preventative maintenance that should be done on any electronics.

We all have a bit of responsibility with the problem but the problem remains with the manufacturer to give us the tools and the methods to keep the laptop clean.

The reality is there hasn't been any appreciable downward trend in the anti-piracy rates in the past six years or so. We did a Webcast for the Australian Computer Soceity in March 2006 and presented publicly available data that shows the trend line is as good as "flat lined and bottomed out" at 32 to 33 per cent in Australia every year since 1999. Overseas many countries show similar "flat line" trends.

Lets hope the Canadian (CAAST) and the European(FAST) arms of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) don't follow the lead of the BSA in U.S. which is offering large rewards for employees and ex-employees to "snitch" on the boss! The Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft may well go the same way.

The BSAA has been offering "dob in the boss rewards" for well over 10 years, but the biggest reward here was $AUD 10K many years ago. In the U.S. the rewards scheme introduced in 2006 (was $US 50,000 initially in Feb 2006) is now up to $US 200,000 - in UK its GBP 20,000 and in Sweden 500,000 Kronor.

This reward scheme does nothing for employer-employee relationships and many organizations are "going down" because of this approach.

The reward scheme may seem to be well meaning and having good intentions. But it just isn't getting the results that are needed as they are going about it the wrong way.

The 'mirrored' approach is definitely the preferred solution. However, it is usually the most expensive of alternatives.

Before opting for this approach a Business Impact Analysis must be undertaken. If after examining the business model it is determined that a company would suffer dire consequences -- either financially, credibility wise, or due to regulatory requirements --should a "disaster" event affect their operations, then a 'mirrored' or fail over approach may be justified.

Even then, the extent to which this will occur also has an impact on the decision. An event that would cost a company $24 if they do not recover immediately does not justify mirroring. One that knocks out a network of ATMs would. In many cases a recovery strategy that combines regular offsite backups with a tested recovery plan will suffice.

The Business Impact Analysis will determine a company's tolerance to recovery delays and potential data loss.

In your article about 64-bit systems, you missed mentioning Linux.

There have been 64-bit versions of Linux, going back at least 11 years, for the DEC Alpha, followed shortly after by a PowerPC version. When the Itanium and AMD 64 chips were released, from day one in both cases the only available operating system was Linux.

The computer I'm using right now is an AMD 64 system, running SUSE Linux 10.1, on which the vast majority of the software is 64-bit. I even have a 64 bit version of OpenOffice running.

There's a whole world of 64-bit software available, including Linux, running on everything from the desktop on up to Cray and IBM supercomputers.

A fibre optic link to my residence only makes sense to me if I control it. I can only control it if I own it to the terminating facility. I also must have a fundamental right to a minimum service at no cost. All residents of Canada (presumably other countries will follow) must have this right and no corporate, government, or bureaucratic entity should be able to take away this right for whatever reason. The telcos/cable companies can then sell me anything I want. Power to the people.

If other providers follow suit, consumers would be left with no choice other than to accept this outrageous intrusion into our privacy. I think consumers should join hands and force the providers to revoke this unnecessary step.

I'd be willing to move from Bell to a different service provider if they do not have this "monitoring" clause in their service agreement.

Those with nothing to hide can fully support a legal framework that allows for monitoring of all communications, when justified and legally executed.

Is it just me, or does it seem that those who fight against authorities' having legal means to watch for illegal activities are the first to complain when these same authorities get caught flat-footed by some major disaster, like 9-11 or the London subway bombing.

I am happy the IPC is working to ensure consumers are not robbed of their privacy because of some fine print at the bottom of an ad.

This is a good beginning, but I think specific laws should be enacted to protect hapless consumers. Tracking items like medicine bottles is different from tracking people.

Every possible means should be used to ensure retailers do not misuse RFID. Technology is rarely bad - but problems can arise from misuse (even when this is not intentional) and faulty deployment.

After quoting an IDC-conducted study that the piracy rate in Canada is on the decline, your article makes the assumption that anti-piracy laws are the reason for the decline.

While this may in part be true, the article ignores the massive shift away from vendor supplied software such as MicroSoft Office to open source software such as OpenOffice.org - as a possible contributing factor to the declining piracy rate.

I have recently read that 20 per cent of servers shipped in Canada today are being delivered with Linux installed. It is now possible to have a complete desktop loaded entirely with open source software, without sacrificing productivity and usability.

This is a very interesting interview with Rajesh Setty, chairman of Cignex Technologies Inc.

The interviewer, Joaquim P. Menezes has done an excellent job, asking very relevant questions and extracting the most useful and powerful "success principles" for the readers to adopt.

Setty has clearly demonstrated how one can achieve success with his valuable, easy-to-follow advice. The examples given by him are appealing and motivating. I am particularly impressed with the tips provided on mind mapping, use of baroque music when learning, de-commoditization, building personal brands and knowledge arbitrage.

The most valuable of all the information is the explanation of the ROII (return on investment for an interaction)concept.

This latest cut - which Wall Street is treating as overdue - is an important step in Jonathan Schwartz's re-focusing of Sun.

Former chief executive Scott McNealy was so unrelentingly focused on Microsoft that he allowed his own company to lose sight of "who" it was.

Sun became identified by what it was not, rather than by what it was. The tragedy is that Sun used to be defined by one of the best and clearest positioning lines ever, "The Network is the Computer." While this line went away years ago as Sun's communicated positioning, it is as relevant today as when it was first introduced.

Interestingly, it seems that Schwartz agrees. In reading his blog, I noticed he used the line last month in announcing the launch of Sun's new utility computing grid service. So who knows? Perhaps we will see the line brought back. It would certainly be an indication that one of the more innovative companies of the tech era has re-located its reason for being.

This is extortion plain and simple -- and Microsoft is getting away with it.

They are the ones who have left holes in their operating systems and productivity applications, while taking months and years to "fix" these problems.

Their primary methodology is to force both businesses and home users to upgrade to the next version of their products, which are invariably just as buggy and problematic.

It's a solely self-serving strategy, and totally irrational. It's surprising with the challenge from Open Source dogging them that Microsoft dare offer a "security product" to make up for their own product suite's poor performance.

Sony's idea of compensation is laughable. $7.50? Free Downloads? The downloads are only lo-fi MP3s and aren't worth much anyway.

On the other hand, it took those affected by the time it took to strip Sony's rootkit software off the hard drive ensure that it was really gone, and scan everything was many hours over several sessions.

Fair compensation would be directing Sony to pay out around $1000 -- $500 for the work to fix their mess, and $500 for punitive damages to teach them not to mess with other people's data security.

Lets face it - just how much does it really cost to develop software. Each year big software companies post higher and higher profits, all the while complaining about the piracy issue. I do agree piracy is bad, but OEM XP is about $50 bucks, while buying the copy for a fresh install can cost you as much as $600 bucks. Something is not right.

David Fewer, legal counsel for the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic claims that by offering free downloads, Sony BMG is "effectively shifting part of the cost of compensating consumers to its artistes who don't get paid for free downloads." Financially, Fewer argues, "this is a good deal for Sony BMG."

Does this not violate the very laws Sony claims to care so much about?

Sony's spyware was designed to protect intellectual property. Now it can't be using the intellectual property of its artistes to compensate for its own misdeeds.

Glad to see Microsoft playing catch up again. It was lonely for users of Linux 64-bit machines. Now hopefully we should see lower hardware prices as - with Microsoft joining the 64-bit fray - manufacturers will be more inclined to release more 64-bit machines.

The Canadian Radio Television and Telecommunications Commission has to make a change in the concept of telephone numbers - that is, they belong to the subscriber, not the carriers. With Voice over IP, these numbers will be much like a Social Insurance Number - that remains with you for life. Eventually, regardless of city, province or even country you will be able to call my number, and be connected to me, with no long distance charges applicable. Incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs) have to learn to come to grips with this new reality.

Demands for disclosure of personal information has been a major concern for me for many years. As a consumer I witness the few attempts to my protect information effectively negated by demands to sign lengthy and ambiguous release statements... or have my services/business severely restricted and in many cases withdrawn by the provider.

Tantamount to blackmail one could argue. The government's rules and approach are clearly ineffective for consumers. Who bears the cost and grief when personal information is made available (through hacking or laptop theft, for instance) and misused?

I wholeheartedly agree that stiffer rules are required, backed up by sizable financial penalties. Although only part of the problem, the CMA ought to show some responsibility and leadership here too, rather than assume their members -- and many others, operate in an above-board, ethical manner.

Your article is "bang on".... just as it was 15 or so years ago when I first read about the value of business analysts(BA).

Unfortunately, it seems the role still needs to be defined, as witnessed by the myraid of titles and underlying skill sets required or asked for.

I still believe that, first and foremost, BAs must be business experts who know the formal and informal business processes that exist (for example: how does payroll staff REALLY interact with the benefit underwriters?).

Second, they must be "staffers" of the business unit (not IT) and should "live" on the business floor.

Third, they need a number of the critical skills of a project manager: interpersonal relations, negotiating, and managing expectations. Technical IT skills should be part of the mix, but learned on each IT shop floor (where BAs spend the other half of their life).

As to value, BA's can provide a wealth of technical and business knowledge to internal/external auditors, business-process reengineering, and corporate governance. I hope that, in another 15 years, BA's will get the credit that still seems to be denied.

This is a great article! Somehow we tend to stick with irrelevant "worries" like the gender balance in IT and other professions, while real issues of the IT labour market remain ignored.

Why have computer science and IT lost their appeal for the youth in general?

Probably because of outsourcing and lack of long-term career positions! Not only has the number of applicants dropped, their quality reflected in the high-school average needed for admission has fallen significantly as well.

That's a subject worth more serious analysis and coverage than the IT corporation talking about "expected talent shortages" in IT.

Since it is so well known that dialing 9# will release a phone line for illegal use, I wonder why that feature still exists. Is it not possible for long distance or phone companies to disable the feature, since - as the article states - a phone technician would never require someone to take that step? Or are there other reasons for continuing with the feature?

Netsuite does not support the French language or Canadian accounting standards. Besides, NetSuite is not GAAP (generally accepted accounting standards) compliant.

The panel at this event was loaded with proponents of the "Software manufacturing" methods of production, distribution and funding. Their proposals were unsurprisingly aimed at benefiting these old-economy models against competition and the transformative changes under-way in the software marketplace. Proposals include making enforcement of legacy business models against competitors cheaper, as well as making copyright "stronger" and "longer" which only protects the interests of the incumbent copyright holders over the interests of future creators and innovators. The claim is always that they want to "update" copyright laws, but then they give a laundry list of proposals which protect only the interests of the status-quo business models (whether used by old companies or by some young "prodigy" -- such as that Microsoft protege). The uninformed comments about the "private copying" regime were amusing, given it is the same model (statutory licensing) which legalized the recording industry, commercial radio and the cable companies.

I am very skeptical about the claim that software as a service (SaaS) can reduce costs and open up greater options. True, vendors have us locked in by unfair licencing. But SaaS can be made to do the same. It can also lock your data in proprietary formats, or make it difficult to migrate to another service. Also, you can be sure that once the model is in a dominant position the services will be charged at the highest possible price the market will bear. My suspicion is that SaaS is only an antidote to vendor hardball only during its infancy.

I disagree with the claim by some analysts that Nortel Networks Corp. is a possible prime target. It seems Nortel has outsourced both its R&D and manufacturing. So effectively it's now just a management/consulting company. Nortel's accounting woes are trivial compared to the massive lawsuits it faces. No viable company would even consider acquiring Nortel at this time. When and if the lawsuits do get squared away - bankruptcy notwithstanding - the most realistic suitor would be the new company of Alcatel/Lucent.

I wonder how long it will be before coffee shops are sued - not because hot coffee spilled on patrons, but rather because data of "unsuspecting" patrons made it into the wrong hands while they were sipping and surfing at the local cafe or bistro.

In civilized societies, it's called "blackmail." But most would have to agree that the U.S. justice system takes "civilized" out of civil court. I guess shareholders of both RIM and NTP are happy (NTP's shareholders are rich, while RIM shares should recover the $3.00 in share price shortly). However, the real winners are, of course, the lawyers on both sides. I think it would be real sweet if RIM had managed to retain the right to countersue NTP if their patents are found to be invalid.

The Internet is by nature a disruptive force, and when it comes to China, the Western world doesn't have a clue. The Chinese have every right to progess on their own schedule. The last thing the world needs is a China out of control. I am a very big proponent of the power of the Internet. But I am also apprehensive about putting too much pressure on China to reform. They have kept themselves together for thousands of years. By comparison, the USA is young and immature. So is Canada.

The CRTC is charged with setting just and reasonable rates for local telephone services to protect the consumer - period. It doesn't have a mandate to make investments or charitable donation decisions on my behalf.

With decisions like this one, the CRTC has left the barn door wide open - again - to every corporate abuse one can think of. These abuses will later be justified on grounds of "need" and "corporate philanthropy."

My name for this is: fleecing of the consumer under the umbrella of government protection. Incidentally, this practice is frowned upon by the Consumer Protection branch of the same government. When is all of this going to stop? Whatever happened to the free market?

I'm beginning to sound like Jerry Seinfeld - "People, there are better ways to do this!"

Years of research have shown that close customer involvement in the development process, and co-location of the development team and the customer - if possible - are some ways to ensure success. Moving the development team across the street let alone to another continent is sub-optimal at best. Sure, offshoring is a less expensive way to build systems using traditional methods, but given the current high failure rate of IT projects, it's simply a way to fail at a lower cost!

We, as IT professionals, can't ever seem to get any help out of Microsoft, Google or Yahoo in combating such activities as spam, hacking or virus creation. But these very companies seem to be able to respond promptly to requests to block or track user activity when such requests come from a dictatorial regime that happens to represent the world's largest untapped consumer market. Just a few years ago, the likes of Microsoft, Google and Yahoo espoused the popular notion of the Internet as the true instrument of free expression. However, now they negate that concept, collaborating with the dark side of repression in their pursuit of the almighty dollar. Pitiful!

All who destroy property should be prosecuted, be it a hacker on a Web site, or a vindictive bulldozer operator.

How arrogant of Google to lecture anyone about "search engine optimization" etiquette given their complicit relationship with communist officials in China.

Microsoft is not in the human rights business, it is in the IT business. This smacks of just another way to go a-Microsoft bashing. Although I deplore any form of human rights abuse, why not publish a list of ALL Western companies (not just IT related) that do business in China and ask them what their response would be to a government "request."

This article made me think about the long term, which is sometimes not seen by IT professionals. I have been a systems administrator for two branches in a large organzation. We have under 1,000 employees Canada-wide and eight offices, with three full-time and a few part-time IT people. We work together, but sometimes I tend to view users and the business as an obstacle to moving forward. So, for me, this article brought many issues into focus that I hadn't thought of. I now feel that it is part of my role in IT to better understand the business I support, not just the computers and networks. Thank you for this article.

The primary support for Web applications comes from the "developer" community, which wants to work with the tools of the day. This makes their resum_look good.

I have yet to see an evaluation that determines just the effectiveness of an application that the candidate has worked on in the past.

It's not uncommon for a 20-person project team to work on an application to be deployed on the Web for miniscule number of users, for an even less benefit to the "enterprise", while built using the latest gimmicky langauge, hardly makes for good experience especially if this is repeated often.

Novell Americas President Susan Heystee_s comment about Microsoft_s identity management solution and her claim that it can_t provide identity management across a whole environment are not accurate. Microsoft has been delivering this functionality to our customers since the release of Windows Server 2003 and Active Directory. We have even strengthened our identity management offering with the recent launch in December of Windows Server 2003 R2.

I certainly hope this works better for Oracle than whatever Microsoft is doing to solve their security problems.

Reading your article reminded me of a recent issue I had on e-Bay.

I was searching for a tanning bed to bid for, when I came across what I thought was a very good deal. I went as far as e-mailing the seller of the product, only to be sent more listings of "deals".

The picture for the item to bid for was in fact a tanning bed, but as I read through the disclaimer, I discovered that what people were actually bidding for (and probably did not know) was a list of so-called wholesalers who would sell you a tanning bed.

Needless to say, I reported the seller's ad to e-Bay, which immediately revoked all of his ads and suspended his e-Bay account.

It truly is a "buyer beware" world these days.

Wouldn't a quicker, short-term solution be to block WMF files at the gateway - firewall and Internet filter? Is this too obvious?

Around 1989-90, I worked for a smallish Ottawa manufacturing company that built thousands of flourescent light ballasts under contract for a large, well-known U.S. company that sells control systems for buildings (alarms, thermostats, etc). I cut up the many kilometers of wiring (38 inches at a time) that was used in making those ballasts.

Although I never saw one of those ballasts in actual operation (ho-hum), I was told that they were a new ballast design intended for commercial use that would let the lights operate on a dimmer. The light sensors in the office would be able to adjust the flourescent lights up or down based on how much natural light was coming in through the windows.

I wonder what it is about Fifth Light Technology's product that is considered "new"?

I read with interest this article about wireless Internet access on Canadian university campuses. However, the article failed to mention Universit_aval, the Qu_c City-based university that was the first in the province to offer wireless Internet access on its campus as well as in out-of-campus buildings.

The system - which was put in place gradually starting in 2003 - now covers all areas, even the tunnels that link most buildings. The Faculty of Visual Arts, located downtown, and the School of Architecture in Old Qu_c are also connected. More than 20 programs at Universit_aval encourage the use of portable computers for students and teachers to better communicate.

Denial of Service attacks have been commonplace over the phone service for 50 years. Ask any politician. Also consider the long wait queues when calling most call centers.

There is an intelligent device at the end of a regular analogue phone call - a human being. These devices very often get back-logged.

I would place more priority on information theft and intrusion with VoIP than over DOS attacks. Automatic dialers have been available for years. Privacy issues and DO NOT Call Lists are other priorities.

The biggest problem I have with VoIP is not with security but the "echo" one hears when using the two Nortel CS1000S VoIP telephone systems.

Bell Canada and Nortel have not been able to provide "legacy" type voice quality on VoIP systems. About 40 per cent of our staff experience some form of echo during their calls. A representative from Nortel told me the other week: "VoIP is an emerging technology that does have some inherent echo probelms." There was no indication from him when the echo issue would be resolved.

I would like to inquire of your readers with VoIP phone systems, whether any of them are experiencing echo problems?

I enjoyed reading article on PrimalScript,a scripting tool.

The information flowed nicely from one topic to the next and seemed to capture all aspects, including the positive and negative elements of the product.

However, I was disappointed with the lack of a few important pieces of information.

The article did not provide pricing, and a URL to a Web site from where you could purchase or get more information on PrimalScript. It did, however, provide the name of the company, Sapien. I will use it to search the web for this product.

I like the new format of ComputerWorld Canada. The articles are shorter and to the point.

The article "Fortune - not fame - motivates hackers most..." suggests residents of Toronto are asking what the authorities are going to do about online risks. However, I'm not so sure residents are asking that question.

I would suggest people are actually quite ignorant of online risks. And they don't even know they are ignorant. The problem is one of education.

When people hook up the family computer to the Internet, no one tells them about the risks. No one tells them about how to reduce those risks. It wouldn't be good marketing for the ISPs if they disclosed what those risks were.

A 2004 Forrester Research study of over 6,600 North American homes found only 45 per cent use personal firewalls. After several years of broadband being mainstream, that percentage is disgraceful.

I have been offering free public education sessions about Internet security for the home user for almost five years in schools, libraries, and churches.

To illustrate the public ignorance, one of the common questions I get is: "Why do I need a firewall if I have such and such anti-virus product?."

People are always surprised at what they didn't know but reaching audiences 15 or 20 at a time just isn't going to scale. We need to find a way to convince people that they really do need this education.

There are other On-Demand solutions such as Project-ON-Demand.

It appears Microsoft's announcement is an attempt to stem the tide of On-Demand adoption. [To use its new offerings], Microsoft expects you to have Office installed.

Office Live, for instance, assumes customers have Office applications installed on their PC's.

In my opinion: the Microsoft stack is already too complex and costly. It is difficult to call it 'Productivity Software' anymore. Microsoft is adding to, not reducing, the burden.

Mark Grossi, NCR, chief technology officer states: "An RF reading is subcutaneous. So a damaged or dirty finger - which may cause errors with optical - would not be a problem with RF, because RF scans through six to seven layers of skin."

My question is: Patients who are diabetic need to prick their fingers to measure their blood sugar countless times. This process will develop a change in the pattern of blood vessels under their skin. Will fingerprint biometrics technology take these changes into account?

- Sam Jhangiani, (Calgary)

NCR Response:

Many fingerprint sensors use surface-sensing methods to read the fingerprint pattern off the surface of the finger skin. For instance, optical imaging methods take a picture of the finger's surface skin. Although these mechanisms are able to acquire fingerprint images from young, healthy adults in controlled indoor settings, they potentially have difficulty capturing useful fingerprint images from other segments of the population, under real-world operating conditions that face an ATM, with diverse user population and diverse environmental conditions.

The semiconductor-based fingerprint reader uses small RF signals to detect the fingerprint ridge and valley pattern. This mechanism works by reading the fingerprint pattern from the live, highly-conductive layer of skin that lies just beneath the skin's dry outer surface layer. This is less affected by common skin surface conditions -- including dry, worn, calloused, dirty or oily skin -- that can impair the ability of other sensors to acquire accurate fingerprint images.

Therefore this sensor is still using the skin layers and therefore not affected by blood flow. A needle mark would not affect the overall ability of this system to perform.

These fingerprint sensors should not be confused with the fingervein systems which use images of the veins within the finger and therefore potentially could be affected by medical conditions that change the blood flow within the finger.

Seems to me this could be used by law enforcement to monitor speed, making ticketing of violators easier and increasing revenues. This would probably be more cost-effective than using cameras, since most of the hardware is already there. That would cause an interesting reaction from the Civil Liberties Union, among others.

This organization was never a Microsoft shop. Yet the cost reductions it claims are based on the old Novell system they were running. It's about time rusty wallets were opened in upper management to allow these cost savings. Or was it simply a case of inertia on part of IT management?

The paper I just read was so helpful, and easy to understand, with the least amount of jargon. I salute you on that. It was absolutely a great relief to find what I was looking for after six hours of search.

I find the whole anti-RFID arguement of the privacy groups completely spurious, both from a technology and a utility point of view.

The limitations of current RFID technology make it impossible to read an RFID tag from more than a few meters distance.

I suspect the same holds true for newer tag technologies currently under development. Given that constraint, it is not practical to read an RFID tag once it has left the store - you would need a reader in every consumer's house. Ditto for a "rogue data miner" cruising down your street to see what he can pick up - the technology just isn't there.

As for the other oft stated concern - the concern that personal or financial data would be written to the tag - what's the point? If I, the vendor or manufacturer, can't read the tag once it has left the pharmacy, what is the purpose of writing personal data to the tag? I'd be better off to write the data to a database for later analysis - something that is eminently doable with today's technology.

And, by the way, when you pay for your prescription with your credit card, your pharmacy, your bank, and the credit card company all know you have purchased that particular medicine. Your doctor already knows because he/she wrote your prescription. So who exactly is going to gain knowledge from an RFID tag that they can't already get from some other source?

In today's information age privacy is a very legitimate that everyone should share. Let's just make sure we are worrying about issues that truly have an impact on our privacy instead of playing the Luddite.

By the way, I don't work for an RFID vendor, so I have no vested interest in RFID technology. I'm just a private citizen who is comfortable with technology, who doesn't like seeing technology portrayed incorrectly to those who may not be as comfortable with it as we are.

Once again we have a case of a "whiner" running to the authorities, in this case the EU, to "Microsoft bash" on speculation. Nothing stopped, or is stopping, Symantec or any other corporate IT "whiners" from developing and marketing a competing operating system (OS) for Windows.

All these complainers were happy to make money selling their products while letting Microsoft incur the expense of developing, maintaining, supporting and marketing the Windows OS. The fact that they never invested in R&D to market an alternative operating system resulting in Microsoft's "monopoly" in the OS arena is no one's fault but their own.

Now that Microsoft wishes to increase the quality of protection for their OS by integrating anti-virus and anti-spyware capabilities Symantec suddenly cries foul and "anti-trust".

Symantec should get their act together, rather than wasting untold amounts of money (theirs, Microsoft's, the court system's etc.) on lawsuits. They should spend the money, time, and effort, developing a superior product - whether that be an operating system or anti-virus/spyware suite.

The public will always choose the product that gets the job done properly and efficiently.

According to Hossein Eslambolchi (CIO of AT&T) the No.1 IT error is the "failure to push more security upstream into the cloud." He says it's a big mistake to put all security at the edge of the network.

This applies to many facets of IT, not just security. For example, SPAM control follows a similar pattern. What is being done is akin to allowing pollutants to freely enter the environment and then filter them out just before you breathe, drink, and eat. The environment gets spoiled. The contaminants spread disease making the filtering process much more complex.

While the article is applicable to a few software projects, it really misses the point for most. And that is: users should be actively involved in the software's design and testing.

More specifically, software design and testing should be lead by the end-user. And any attempts to fully define the software in advance should be abandoned. In my 20 years or so of system analysis and development it has only been a handful of projects where the final software matched the initial requirements.

The far more likely scenario is that features/requirements deemed critical at the beginning are eventually dropped. They get dropped for many reasons: cost, time constraints (slash and burn), practicality, and so on. And, in their place - time and budget permitting - a slew of replacement requirements/features are used instead.

If your building a house it makes sense to define everything up-front, as in construction up-front planning reduces cost. However, the same cannot be said of software design.

In fact, the opposite is true: Design only what you need, when you really need it. This is the cheapest solution, and if you work closely with the end-user you also ensure that what you deliver is what he needs and wants.

There won't be any need to spend lots of money on training because the users were there in development, they will ensure your design/layout is a natural extension of what they have currently.

I would say this study is pure nonsense. The biggest distraction for me is working in a cubicle. I have to listen to other loud conversations over the "cube farm" walls. That is very helpful for my productivity.

Perhaps a major reason for the surfing is an escape from the drudgery of work in the corporate realm.

Perhaps, after installing the net-nanny software, we should also track usage of washrooms, lunchrooms and coffee areas so that we can eliminate those distractions too.

The advent of chip credit cards with a new point-of-sale (POS) infrastructure is great news. There was an urgent need for improving security on credit and debit card transactions, as credit card fraud costs the banking sector billions of dollars every year. Designing the POS infrastructure to accept both chip and mag-stripe cards ensures that neither the consumer nor the merchant gets too far ahead of the other's adoption curve. That's intelligent thinking.

I am sure most credit card companies would want to adopt this new payment system that - from the looks of it - promises to be more secure than the traditional method.

The article should have gone beyond just reporting the findings of a report. For example, the quoted 5.9 hours of Web usage per week is about the total break time for many employees each week. Maybe they were surfing on their breaks hence no "real" productivity was lost.

There is also no data on Web usage vs. need. For example, I perform online banking at work if I am staying late and cannot leave the company. Since I am on a salary, the company gains 2-3 hours of productive work vs. 15 minutes of Web usage due to my chores.

In the overall sense of lost productivity, has Web usage replaced local meetings at the water cooler? Maybe on the grand scale of things, nothing has really changed. I have read articles by medical specialists that non-productive play between employees builds teams and enhances personal growth -- leading to a more productive employee.

The quoted stats in this piece are meaningless unless the company collecting the data can effectively incorporate controls to remove non-contributing factors (like the examples above), which I believe cannot be done.

Steve O'Halloran has missed what is probably the number one factor in organizations not moving quickly to XP: cost.

Even if a site-licencing agreement with Microsoft is in place so that the direct software cost is covered, it takes a lot of time and energy from IT staff to do a large OS conversion.

Without a compelling reason to move, it's hard to justify a large additional expense just to stay current. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

The stakeholders involved in the Thames Valley Diagnostic Imaging project are to be congratulated on their accomplishment.

Tele-health projects such as these address several pressing issues in our province, such as waiting times, access to services, and the ability for small towns to attract and retain specialists.

However, Mr. Menezes is mistaken in his assertion that THVPP is a "first for Ontario". In 2002, the Northern Ontario Digital Radiology Network (NORrad) connected nine hospitals in the Cochrane and Timiskaming Districts, an area roughly the size of Great Britain.

NORrad is the largest regional multi-governance, multi-site PACS installation in North America. It also has links to institutions such as the Northeastern Ontario Regional Cancer Centre and Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children.

It is very encouraging to read that more health facilities in the province are collaborating on creative networks like this.

My article's focus on the Thames Valley Hospital Planning Partnership (TVPP) was in no way intended to minimize the accomplishments of other shared digital imaging projects such as NORad, which _ as Ms. Matear points out _ are having a dramatic impact on how healthcare is delivered.

TVHPP is the only shared digital imaging project of its kind in the province that has been funded by Canada Health Infoway. In that sense it would be a "first for Ontario."

The use of blogs proves that good communication throughout a project's lifecycle contributes to it's success.

At DIGITAL Equipment Corp. we made extensive use of VAX Notes, similar to Internet NewsGroups. However, no content was deleted in the creation, development, management and support of almost every product we produced - hardware and software.

We had tens of thousands of VAX Notes accessible to every employee for reading, querying and writing, worldwide. Employees' daily activities included reading all new entries in the various VAX Notes conferences about products they were involved with.

They responded to those seeking help with suggestions or solutions. Generally all the design documents and drawings were available or referenced in the first few new conference entries.

If "security is paramount with wireless kiosks processing credit card information", then why used a cracked security protocol?

WEP (Wired Equivalency Protocol) is flawed and has been compromised on numerous occasions.

This implementation will draw the attention of hackers looking for credit card numbers. With the availability of 802.11i/WPA2 and AES encryption, the IBM design is boarding on the equivalent of IT Malpractice.

In my opinion, using WEP as a security control for a system that is processing credit cards is either lazy, stupid, or both.

It is inconceivable, that the staff responsible for IT Security for this project from IBM, Fairmont, Air Canada, and the major credit card corporations would let this type of architecture be deployed!!

This is a pretty good article.

What I do take a bit of issue with, is the portrayal of a graduating student's lack of experience as something new, or recent.

Not the case. I got my first IT job in 1981 and every computer science grad that I have come across, including myself, has faced the problem that school just doesn't reflect the real world.

I went from a half-semester Cobol course where my largest program was five pages to working on 10,000 line programs. Not to mention lack of business-related knowledge.

The learning project's aims may not be ideal, but it would help. Any exposure to the real world would be a leg up for the people who take part.

Your article regarding Eugene Roman's miraculous turnaround of Bell Canada's IT department is no more than career advertising for Mr. Roman who is likely to leave Bell soon.

As an individual closely involved in Bell S&T, I can say that things have not really changed since Eugene Roman has been here.

There are many IT projects at Bell that crash and burn and many more are cancelled due to lack of resources and/or lack of commitment by other Bell business units.

Mr. Roman speaks of the "old school" and how his vision and skill turned things around. The only thing they changed was the questionnaire to gauge employee satisfaction. If they can't change the numbers, change the questions to get those numbers.

I think your assessment of company CIOs should be more critical if anyone is to take these editorials seriously.

I thought this article would be about how fewer professionals are studying Computer Science because there are so many more options for formal education since I graduated from university in the mid-80s. Instead, it talks about the evils of a formal education and about Computer Science being the only path to becoming an educated professional. It is true Computer Science enrollments have dropped dramatically in North America over the last few years. However, this is partly due to an increase in university-level programs in Information Systems and other applied technologies, as well as diploma programs targeted at those who studied other subjects during their post-secondary education.

The broadening of formal education options is a positive trend. Graduates of applied programs, such as information systems, are much better prepared to work in business settings, take on non-programming tasks, and understand the 'whys' of providing successful business solutions. These topics are rarely covered in any depth in traditional Computer Science programs.

This letter is to inform you that the program being offered by the University of Ontario Institute of Technology is not the first of its kind in Canada. The program I am referring to is Master of Information Technology Security. Georgian College in Barrie Ontario has a post-graduate course in Cyber Space Security, which has been offered since the year 2000. So, maybe UOIT should do its research more thoroughly before making any claims about being the first to offer such a course. If they can't make accurate claims, how accurate can their instruction be?

University of Ontario Institute of Technology's (UOIT) Master of Information Technology Security is the first of its kind because you get a Master's degree, as opposed to an Ontario College Graduate Certificate, which is what Georgian College gives you, according to their site. It's a post-graduate program, but not a Master's program.

Another difference is that UOIT's program is two years - Georgian's is one year (3 semesters). Also, UOIT's program is meant for people who have worked in the IT industry for at least two years, and it grooms students for careers as CSOs or CISOs - or any other higher-level security positions. Georgian College says its grads have career opportunities as "administrators or technicians in information security technology. Job titles include Data Security Analyst, Information Security Administrator, and Computer Security Consultant to name a few."

I had just finished reading LinuxFormat (UK) article on Firefox when I saw your opinion piece.

You make interesting points but miss two of the most salient ones (pro or con).

Pro: Firefox is one of the most user-friendly pieces of software available.

Updating, adding or tailoring your Web experience with Firefox is just plain and simple. Once shown the advantages of this product, every user I have demoed to, switches.

Con: From a business perspective, Firefox is a headache. Getting it, installing it and tweaking it requires time and effort. It does not auto-update. In an organization with 1,000 desktops, this could mean a lot of time spent administering the product.

In short, though it is vastly superior to IE, there is still room for improvement. On the other hand, unlike IE, everyone has access to the code.... It will improve and it will, most likely, get to the 35% critical mass required to become a player.

Just because IE is dominant should not obscure the fact that Microsoft produces bad, non-standard compliant code. If Web sites don't work with Firefox, it's because they don't conform to the standard, plain and simple.

While the decision to implement a recycling fee on PCs is deemed worthwhile, you may find that the costs to organizations may be understated.

I work for a national organization that has offices across Canada. Our current process is to ship all our machines to a central location for preparation, and then distribute them. My concerns are the following:

1) If I pay to ship hardware to Alberta, but its final destination is Manitoba, is my organization going to be assessed twice?

2) Am I now going to have to implement yet another process to track this particular fee against specific pieces of hardware in order to prove to various jurisdictions that a fee has already been assessed?

3) Will the province in which I actually dispose of the PC attempt to look for proof of payment, and if the original payment went to another province, will it levy an additional fee, or worse still, force me to ship it back for disposal?

4) Are provinces going to implement audit processes to ensure I'm not "ducking" the charge?

Again, while the concept is worthwhile, I don't believe the larger ramifications have been thought through for corporations with operations in more than one province.

"Still no clear case for Linux desktop"

What a petty explanation for an excuse!

Corporate suits are afraid to admit that their predictions and decisions have been completely wrong. They know that and now they pay! Hahaa :-

What you don't have in your head you must pick from your pocket!

I agree with your point. What I find sad? At the LinuxWorld show I attended, 8 out of 10 exhibitors where running Windows XP desktops! If they are selling Linux-based programs/ services what message does this send to the new community?

I'm an advocate for Open Source, but at the end of the day, CIO/ CTO's are still on the hook for rolling out machines in production environments and with this type of small/ medium business mindset, I'm sure the people are still holding off on corporate acceptance of Linux!

The real killer app for Linux would be true Windows emulation which would allow native Wintel based applications to be run on this desktop.

Linux is still a good Server alternative until you need to license. At this point you may as well pay Microsoft their $1500 which is the same cost as a Linux Enterprise server.

Time will tell..

This from your newsline: "It found that 57 per cent of spam originated from the U.S., down from 86 per cent during June and July last year. The decrease in spam from the U.S., and increase in zombies in China, was not necessarily a surprise, Stanley said."

Just because a percentage is down doesn't mean units are down. If in 2004 1,000 pieces of spam are sent, 86 per cent from the US, while in 2005, 1,000,000 spam e-mails are sent, 57 per cent from the US, the amount of spam from the US is still very, very high.

The design of the QWERTY keyboard was done to minimize the incidence of common letter pairs being next to each other, not to deliberately slow typing speeds. It was designed to allow the highest possible typing speeds while minimizing jams.

That it was done specifically to slow typing speeds, and is an inherently worse keyboard design, is a myth. That the qwerty keyboard has the cost of "loss of speed and efficiency, and physical strain" over more intelligent keyboard designs like the Dvorak standard is also not backed up by legitimate research. You can go to this site for an excellent article on the myth, and it's creation.

The opening paragraph in the front page article is entirely based on incorrect information. It doesn't speak well of the writer, nor the editing and fact checking at IT World. You should have a higher standard for front page articles.

Dan McLean's April 15 article, "Enterprise Commitment and 3Com Don't Go Together," was less a news article and more an editorial based not on today's facts, but on activity from more than three years ago.

While 3Com did make some decisions about its approach to the enterprise market in the midst of the market/tech slowdown in the late 90's/early 2000, the reality is we have since made aggressive moves focused on serving the needs of enterprises of all sizes.

Since 2003, with investment in our joint venture, Huawei-3Com, and our acquisition of the industry leader in intrusion prevention systems, TippingPoint, we have invested nearly a half billion dollars to build one of the industry's broadest portfolios of enterprise solutions. And, judging from the 2,600 Canadian resellers that team with 3Com today, they too seem quite comfortable with our commitment to the enterprise.

At 3Com, we have learned a great deal from our past actions and are focused on the future by working with enterprise customers, including those in Canada, that have been locked into proprietary systems and inflexible vendors for too long.

It is time to look toward the future. It's easy to play Monday-morning quarterback, but is it timely to go back for the basis of your column? Don't readers deserve news, not a rehash of history?

Does IT represent a competitive advantage, as Tapscott argues, or is it a utility as Carr describes it?

[I agree with] Tapscott that IT remains a tool for competitive advantage for any organization. Some advantages may be smaller than others but IT is still a valuable organizational arm.

Many retailers are recognising the benefits of proper ID management as are governments. If a retailer has managed to convince a shopper of its corporate integrity regarding the gathering of personal information how is this not an advantage over a retailer who has ignored all security processes? This is IT working with other areas of corporate governance.

Another example is that of on-line banking. If a bank cannot convince me of the integrity and security of its site, I won't use it. It is the same with ABMs. Again, IT is at the core of service provisions to maxamise returns.

Carr is incorrect in assuming that IT has graduated to an infrastructural "commodity" such as electricity (I don't consider railroads to be analogous to IT). IT has a long way to go before it is as ubiquitous as electricity as a service. One day maybe, but not yet.

I do not quite agree with Goodnight's view that meetings are a waste of time. They are an effective means of communication, though to an extent managers may misuse meetings.

I was on a project where, in the absence of meetings, conflicting proposals were made. It was chaotic. Finally I set up a weekly meeting and we met our goals ahead of time.

Meetings are mandatory unless there are more effective means of communication. I would like to know what those means are, if any.

We have tried to install the SP2 update on all XP Pro machines, but it created a conflict with some application and caused File Explorer and User interface to hang when you right-clicked on a file (to get Properties, or file size, as an example).

We run MS Office, Symantec Enterprize Security and CRM Maximizer on all machines.The Win2000 machines are smooth. Only the XP Pro SP2 are affected. Hence, we rolled all XP Pro users back to SP1.

Any ideas?

The last paragraph of Dr. Thompson's article reads, "It means an opportunity to develop standard codes of ethics, accountability and design. It means catching up to other professions such as engineering, medicine, law or accounting."

The Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) has had such a standard trademarked since 1989. It is called the Information Systems Professional of Canada (ISP).

ISP covers ethics and accountability, as well as a broad base of knowledge and experience. For design standards, CIPS is working on a defined Body of Knowledge and Standards of Practice.

If we are "going pro" the majority in the IT industry should consider applying for the ISP designation.

Since Americans are so litigious and sue everyone - there is a simple solution to these matters. Do not sell products in the U.S. - mark them clearly "not for sale or use in the USA." Then the rest of the world can deal with copyright in a reasonable fashion.

The Ipsos-Reid poll does not account for the rise in use of server level anti-spam technology. The poll is meaningless without this statistic. In 2004, the world's largest porn spammer, Webfinity/Dynamic Pipe received connectivity on two peers from Telus. Over 48,000 IP addresses were served. Bandwidth up, spam down? I think not.

Interesting article, but I do not think it applies to the public sector as the Treasury Board of Canada just stopped the Terminable allowance in January for its IT staff. They did this before negotiations commenced for a new contract.

It's a surprisingly short-sighted move that demotivates employees, generates confrontation, and adversely affects the government's IT succession planning program. Many public servants are retiring in the next five to 10 years. It does not serve the taxpayer well to save a few salary dollars now only to have to pay an even larger premium for IT staff later. Having worked for both the private and public sectors I also how challenging it is to attract younger workers and retain middle aged workers. You do not do this by cutting an average of $200 from their salaries each month. A complaint has been filed by the union that represents IT workers in the federal government with the Public Service Staff Relations Board. A decision is pending , but meanwhile I anticipate productivity losses because some workers have stopped doing the extras. If the matter is not resolved soon, I suspect workers will do even less, and may even consider job action or a return to the private sector.

Microsoft has apparently brought to market another very efficient way of adding even more interruptions to the day. Everyone talks about the advantages of collaboration, but what I actually see happening is people using every technique they can find to get some uninterrupted time to accomplish something that requires thought. Fortunately, all of this technology has an off switch.

Very interesting about the geeky part.

It explains my 13 year old daughter's mixed feelings after she got 93 per cent in her computer studies class in high school.

I sent her a link to this article.

Hopefully she will share it with hers girl friends. Young girls need encouragement. We all can help in two ways: Firstly, by encouraging girls who take an interest or show an aptitude for IT, and secondly, by helping change the perception that IT is not cool. As far as IT not being social, that's is a stereotype from the geek programming era that we never really shook.

Okay, there are more guy computer geeks than female computer geeks? So what? There are more female nurses than male nurses, and more female teachers than male teachers. Why aren't there panicky seminars trying to convince more boys to become teachers and nurses?

For some time I've believed that defending against this type of thing is futile. I would be more interested in a class action suit against the perpetrators and more particularly, one that includes beneficiaries as they have deep pockets.

Many perpetrators are undoubtedly kids but many would also be operating with equipment owned or given to them by someone who does have deep pockets. The nice thing about libility is that the deep pocket ends up paying no matter how small a percentage of liability is ascribed. A few lost homes would be a sterling goal. I currently reside in the USA so it may be easier to start here because the trial lawyers, like pit bulls, are almost out of control and this would be an ideal target to set them on. We even have bounty hunters who will operate in foreign countries to bring people home for the party.

In a world where I draw a salary and do not get paid for all the extra weekend and evening work I do, with a boss who has no issue calling me even on the rare weekend I am not on call, this article strikes a nerve.

On one hand, employers 'save' all these extra dollars by having techs do additional work for free. On the other they prohibit employees from recieving calls from friends and family on the corporate 'cell phone/blackberry leash.' This is unbelievable.

The main reason for low enrollments in IT college programs is instability in the IT field as a whole. I know many young students who changed their major from IT to something else because of this instability. In the DC metro area, for example, to say a significant number of jobs are being lost to foreign labour is a big understatement. I have worked for companies...where more than 90 per cent (of the staff) were foreigners. One cannot help but think: aren't Americans good enough to work for American companies in America!

In general, most companies now seem more concerned with the initial cost of an employee, not the quality of skills, security risks, or long term consequences.

We are all clients of the Federal Government. If the Feds are not working on this strategy, they should be. What really should happen is we should be able to contact any government (federal, provincial, municipal, territory), through one number (maybe 311?). The cost of "triage" operators, trained to direct calls to the appropriate government/department/office would be far less, and it would also be less confusing for citizens than the current system. Who knows, we could even (tongue firmly in cheek), outsource it to a third-world country

I was very interested in the Mymo phones and popped over to their site only to see the following: Communic8 have suspended sales of Mymo.

The withdrawal letter states they withdrew the phones on January 11. This is really too bad. Having a four-year old and a two-year old, it would be nice to have a device they could call me or my family on with the press of a single button. I am very disappointed Mymo is not available.

Your article is right on the money. Drs. Linda Duxbury and Nick Bontis have been warning both the private and public sectors for years that many baby boomers would not only retire from IT, but also choose to retire early or do something else outside IT.

The demand for managers outside IT will put an extra strain on the IT sector. It takes a great deal of organizational experience to learn the ins and outs of a business in a private company, and even longer to understand how governments work. I am 47 now and intend to buck the trend set by many colleages in my age group. I am shifting from the technical stream in IT to the managerial stream. I like to work with people, help them to do their best, resolve conflicts, and so on... but then agin I was a social worker before I got into IT.

From what I can see at the operational level, the premium for IT managers and execs may well be very high indeed.

Moving operations abroad leaves Canadians without jobs. Our neighbours to the south realized this and labour market conditions have improved there. I would recommend a strike to protest against job cuts here. Employers underestimate the power of mass protests and political pressure.

More hogwash from Nortel. Hope a large shareholder like the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund asks for an independent assessment and appointment of a real ethics watchdog.

I have used e-learning solutions offered in our department. It definately saves money especially in travel and accomodation dollars. It also adds value by making education more accessable. Well trained publics servants are better equipped to serve the public. Yes, I work for the government, but I am a taxpayer too. Like most public servants I did not leave the private sector to get rich as a public servant, but to serve. It is certainly encouraging to see press on one of our many successes instead of the few mistakes that are made in comparison. Kudos to IT world for seeting an example of good journalism.

Pierre Laframboise, Kingston

Isn't it nice to get training at the expense of the Canadian (working-poor) citizen, while continuing to receive a fairly lucrative salary at that? Self-employed types like myself usually have to foot the cost out of our own pocket while foregoing any salary for the time taken. All this goes on while business bends the political arm to get the IT ranks saturated to the point that hamburger flippers might have a more meaningful and rewarding career. This is (expletive) infuriating when one considers the job security these government employees have. So much for the concept of equality, eh!

The Toronto-based Canadian Software Asset Management Users' Group was formed in 1992 to provide a peer forum for software contract and vendor management, and to influence vendors' practices as to software contract terms, pricing, and related issues. Readers are welcome to participate in CSAMUG.

The end of the article it states that the combined VERITAS/Symantec companies would have revenues of $56 Billion by 2007. That cannot be accurate - I think that should read between 5 & 6 B$.

I found this article very interesting. Seems things are going full circle as I worked for a service bureau, Multiple Access Computer in the 1980's that rented time on Cray supercomputers that used Control Data's Cyber 835 mainframes to do batch processing and act as front end dvices to feed the Gray information. This was used by companies such as Spar Aeospace to do simulations for the Canadarm for the space shuttle program for example. I also work on a project team to create a tieline between the Cyber ASCI format (026) and IBM EBCDIC (029) format so that we could also do some of the data processing on IBM 370 and 3090's as well. Later on in my career as a supervisor at our Nationa Weather Centre at Environment Canada we also used a Cray 2 supercomputer for processing models. Eventually upgrading to heavy number crunchers like the Hitachi XL/60 and then the NEC (ETA10?). The use of super compters by service bureau's has been somewhat stagnant for the past 2 decades, but I agree that there is the potential for a bigger market in the future. We continue to produce more and more data, and expect and reuire it to be computer ever faster to produce useful and timely information. Your article sure brought back some fond memories, and a little deja vu.

I recently worked a contract with a "Certified SAS Professional." No matter how you cut it, there is no certification for common sense, efficient logic, simplicity and neatness of code and organization. I am not a Certified SAS Professional, but after seeing what this fellow produced, perhaps I should look into it.

Mr. de Jager, intentionally or otherwise, does make a subtle point: Why do human resource staff put so much faith in these dime-a-dozen certifications? Will my spending a few hundred dollars make a difference in my options down the road? Do I really want to work for a company that is too lazy to check out candidates and their capabilities themselves? Who certifies all the soft skills these same HR gurus always claim are lacking with most candidates?

It seems to me, like most things in business today, companies are looking for the quickest, cheapest way to deflect any possible capability for a bad decision.

I was saddened to see yet another article about the challenges of women in IT riddled with stereotypical comments and poor recommendations. While well-intentioned, I do not believe this type of article actually improves the prospects for females in the industry. Since the majority of men do not believe there is a gender bias but women do, I counter that the problem is one of perceptions perpetuated by articles like this. Rather than blaming gender bias, look instead at what it takes to be in IT management.

I have seen both male and female managers struggle through the demands of a growing family. The reality is that there are very few 30-something CIO's and the peak of your career usually comes after the little ones have headed off to college. Don't feel like you have to get there fast to be considered successful. I too went home early and worked after the kids went to bed but these days, they can stay up a lot longer than I can.

Since studies show women can juggle multiple tasks and prioritization better, one would think they would handle the interruption-driven IT challenge much better than men. Women should naturally rise up the ranks and some do. Something else derails them and it has nothing to do with gender. In personality profiling and leadership competency assessments, the researchers are very careful to explain that just because you have a preferred style does not prevent you from acting counter to your preference. They also have identified a lack of flexibility as the number one reason for executive derailment. If women are continuously told there is a glass ceiling and that they are destined to act in a certain way -- collaborative, nurturing, with compassion and sensitivity -- then they are destined to fail when the environment demands change.

So just what should one do to position for a senior IT management role? First, find an environment that understands the need for staff diversity and development. Without those attributes in the culture, you won't get proper guidance and grooming and the only path to success is to be just like the "guy" in charge. The key to success is "never to see problems as barriers, only as obstacles to overcome." I agree with the author that "it is your own views on how you should act ... that limit your opportunities," but it has nothing to do with being "a wife and mother."

When an advertiser or government agency sends out an announcement, it is not news. You need not cover it as if it were news. You should read between the lines and offer commentary, if needed.

The fact that a set of meetings has been set in (non) motion and that we all face a further year of government inaction on e-mail problems is actually bad news for Canadians.

You can do better. Really, what are the consequences of telling it like it really is? You might not get invited to the Governor General's next tea party in Helsinki? Martin's folks will still send you news releases, even if you've criticized the previous one.

Over the past few months I've been making a point of responding to articles and letters about offshore outsourcing since it's my fervent belief that the value model for outsourcing software development is flawed.

Companies are indeed saving money by sending the development overseas, but that's only in comparison to their existing processes. Offshore development is sub-optimal at best. Research by the Standish Group (http://www.standishgroup.com) has consistently shown that close involvement of the software's customer is a critical success factor in any development project. The moment that the development is moved across the street or around the world, that involvement is adversely affected.

The offshore model typically uses prescriptive software development methodologies that require considerable up-front analysis and design work in order to "nail down" all of the system's requirements and design before any coding is performed. As a result, it is months if not years before any business value is delivered to the customer in the form of a working system.

The use of agile development processes such as Extreme Programming focuses on delivering that value as soon as possible. These methodologies recognize that it's impossible to have requirements that never change due to changes in the business, or that weren't articulated very well in the first place. In addition, especially with Extreme Programming, there is an intense focus on testing the system from Day 1, resulting in much higher quality and reduced overall development cost. Furthermore, these processes use smaller teams that could reduce the staff overhead costs on a project without using cheaper offshore labour.

The bottom line is that companies who are exploring the offshore outsourcing model could very likely benefit just as much if not more from using a different development process. If they are open to changing the way they develop software to offshore, why shouldn't they be open to changing the way they develop software to agile development?

Articles such as this are of little value to the real world. Any article which tackles this highly emotionally charged subject and does not delve deeply into the specifics of the survey method and who is paying for it is simply a waste of everyone's time.

The world is filled with "experts" whose conclusions are for sale. Who has more resources and more to lose than Microsoft?

I had exactly the same experience a couple years ago while representing a U.S. company on a joint development project working with a major router manufacturer in China.

The Chinese company developed their own standards, claiming that they conformed to IEEE standards, but were rather different from what we had. This was not communicated to us initially. We sent them specs and all the necessary information that they promised to conform to, until at the integration stage, we realized a discrepancy but they insisted that they were adhering to the standards.

They demanded that we change our software to conform to the Chinese standards and said they didn't care about U.S. standards. The company said that even without U.S. input, they would be able to supply their own software and hardware internally.

I had the feeling that this would erupt into further problems and disputes later on and it appears I was right.

Learning to set limits of what you do for people without expecting anything in return is a delicate balancing act.

However, besides the altuism associated with providing free tech support for family, friends and various charitable or not for profit groups, the high demand for my services is actually a compliment. These people come to me because I am good at what I do and I have the interpersonal skills to communicate effectively with them.

I was a social worker before I became a computer geek. Now that I am taking on more of a leadership role in IT, the combination of technical skills and interpersonal skills are even more important.

Helping family and friends gives techies the opportunity to hone their social skills both professionally and personally.