Michael MacMillan

The "issue" of women in IT

Later this month an estimated 250 PHP enthusiasts will descend up on Montreal to take part in the second annual PHP Quebec conference

I arrived home after a particularly rotten day (nothing to do with work, of course) recently, and was greeted by a paper recycling bin that, unlike hundreds of its peers on my street, had not been emptied by city workers earlier that day.

He launched a strike at Microsoft Corp. in one of its most secure markets. He championed Linux on the desktop when it was still relatively young on the server scene. And in a country where golf is about exciting as it gets for CEOs, he drove flashy cars and even watched as his wife hosted a television show on pets.

When it comes to rating Microsoft against its competitors, Ballmer is blunt: "With a few exceptions, I absolutely think that we have the best value propositions in the market. And as long as, let's say, the merits of the argument in a sort of a business sense carry the day, we tend to do quite well."

Citing its improved .Net integration and an ability to support faster rollouts, Microsoft Canada Co. officially unveiled its BizTalk Server 2004 suite in Toronto Tuesday.

Besides the incredible shock of learning that governments in power actually dole out favourable contracts to friendly corporate supporters, we learned something else from the recent Auditor General's report. Namely, that Canada's reputation as an online government leader isn't as secure as it once was.

Howard C. Dickson, assistant deputy minister of information management, is leaving the Department of National Defence (DND) after nearly six years heading up IT for an organization that maintains an IT budget of nearly $1 billion.