Frankly Speaking: Be Prepared
IT catches grief for having contingency plans
IT catches grief for having contingency plans
Are you feeling cheated by the Y2K bug yet? Don't worry - if you're an information technology professional, you will. After all that Y2K work, all the late nights and bleary eyes, the repairing and replacing and testing of things that could have broken when 1999 turned into 2000 - after all that, what you're getting at the end of the road is ... nothing.
For Gates: A hacksaw so he can cut up Microsoft before the Feds do.
IT is the enabler of global trade. That makes us a plump target.
It happened again earlier this month -- another big-time gaffe at a retailer's Web site.
It happened again last week: another big-time gaffe at a retailer's Web site. This time it was English catalogue company Argos, whose online operation offered 21in Sony TV sets for £3 (about $US4.75) instead of the £299.99 they were supposed to go for. It was a simple glitch -- a rounding error, a couple of zeroes dropped -- but nobody at Argos noticed the problem until bargain-happy Britons had ordered more than £1 million worth of TVs.
You can learn a lot from hackers. No, seriously. And not just how to send fake e-mail or sneak around a firewall.
Maybe it's the heat. But when I hear that Microsoft is now in the hacking business, I keep seeing visions of what these poseurs would be like as real hackers.
After all these years, is there any future on the Web for CGI -- the venerable Common Gateway Interface?
So it turns out Java is dead meat at Microsoft -- or maybe not, depending on what report you read last week. According to various sources, Microsoft plans to license a Java clone and build its products around that. Or possibly kill its Java products completely. Or conceivably create its own new Javalike language.
Confused? So is everybody else, apparently.
When the world begins its transition to the Euro on Jan. 1, 1999, the 11 "in"nations of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) will become the world's largest single trading partner. And unlike year 2000 projects - which merely allow companies to stay in business - converting your in-house systems to Euro compatability could give your company that extra bit of competitive advantage.