Government & Public Sector

Although issues pertaining to IP (intellectual property) and patents have smaller development houses worried, patents actually can benefit small companies, stressed a panelist at the VSLive conference here on Wednesday. Advocates and opponents of patent procedures for software techniques had their say during a panel session entitled, "Innovation and IP." Panelists had a heated discussion with much input from the audience.

A U.S. district court judge on Wednesday praised Microsoft Corp. for efforts to improve technical documentation for its communications protocols, but questioned the effect in the marketplace of her final judgment in the U.S. government's antitrust case against the software giant. Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said she saw progress in Microsoft's compliance with her November 2002 antitrust judgment, but she also asked lawyers at a compliance status hearing "what, if any, effect" the judgment has had on the software market. There's "no demonstrable change" in Microsoft's dominance of the operating system market, answered Renata Hesse, an antitrust lawyer at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The open-source Firefox browser has cut into Microsoft Internet Explorer's market share, but it's difficult to tell how much of an impact the judgment has had, Hesse added.

In this interview, Robert N. Charette, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium, addresses the role of the CIO and the corporate IT organization amid an atmosphere of increased corporate emphasis on risk management.

THINK

Uline, a distributor of shipping, industrial and packing materials, prides itself on being able to fulfill customer orders within two seconds of a call. But things began to slip about two years ago. Uline

Private messages exchanged using corporate BlackBerry wireless devices may not be quite so private after all. In fact, even the so-called PIN messages that many users thought were untraceable can be logged.

Julie Spallin has security on her mind. As manager of the recently launched Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre or CCIRC, Spallin has her work cut out for her. She and her team at CCIRC have been tasked with monitoring the cyber threat environment in Canada and coordinating appropriate responses. A daunting task? Not to Spallin and her team who lost no time identifying priorities and pursuing them single-mindedly. Two key CCIRC focus areas are: creating the right information exchange mechanisms, and fostering close, ongoing collaboration between the private and public sectors.

By the time you read this, Christmas 2004 will be just a foggy memory and the local gyms will be awash with people trying to work off festive foods their relatives sent them