Todd R. Weiss

About 365,000 hospice and home health care patients in Oregon and Washington are being notified about the theft of computer backup data disks and tapes late last month that included personal information and confidential medical records. n

At least one analyst notes that organizations should devise their own ROI models before adopting open-source as a viable software choice

A mass e-mail purportedly from the FBI is circulating online, carrying with it an attachment that contains a variant of the Sober computer virus. In an announcement today, the FBI advised computer users that the agency never sends unsolicited e-mails and that they should not open the attachments in the fraudulent messages.

Technology job cuts for the first three quarters of the year were up 18.8 percent over the same period in 2004, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a global outplacement company.

As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration considers the use of radio frequency identification tags to help fight counterfeit prescription drugs, privacy advocates are cautiously watching to be sure consumer privacy isn't lost in the process.

In a move to support open-source software development, Computer Associates International Inc. this month announced that technologies covered by 14 of its U.S. patents are being made available to individuals and groups working on open-source projects.

IBM Wednesday launched a new consulting service designed to help businesses plan for critical changes in their workforces as more of their most highly skilled baby boomer workers retire -- taking their knowledge with them.

In its latest Internet Security Threat Report, released Monday, security vendor Symantec Corp. noted that in the first six months of 2005, the open-source Firefox Web browser had more confirmed vulnerabilities than Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer browser. So does that mean that the Mozilla-based browser is less secure than proponents have said and that Internet Explorer is more secure than believed? Not exactly, according to security experts.