Stories by Mark Gibbs

The how, why and where of future IT

What will your IT department look like in, say, five years? This is an important question, because we're at the beginning of an array of major changes in the how, where and why IT is done.

We live in a beta world

George Lucas has been quoted as saying that "A movie is never finished, only abandoned." This is actually a profound insight and makes a lot of sense, because creative people always want to refine their vision to be as close as possible to the perfection they envision. The trouble is if their work is to ever be seen, they have to turn it loose when it is as far past "good enough" as they can afford to go.

Backspin: 2007: The year of being outraged?

The dawn of a new year should be a time of reflection, of weighing what happened in the last year and planning to make the next 12 months better. I have reflected on the happenings of last year and I would sum up 2006 as The Year of Not Enough Outrage.

Back Spin: 50 unfestive things

I am not dreaming of a white Christmas. I do not want my two front teeth, and I do not want to walk in a winter wonderland.

Capsa captures and cooks net comms

We have tested products from many countries, but today we have a first: a Windows network packet capture and protocol analyzer from China. Capsa Enterprise is made by Colasoft, and we are very impressed.

Exploding heads and running in circles

You've got to wonder sometimes how people can open their mouths and say things that are so stupid, so downright transparently ridiculous and illogical that their heads should simply explode.

Disk drives: We're driven to drink

Disk storage is notoriously fickle. One minute your drive is humming happily, and the next it's screaming like a banshee and trying to turn into a lathe - or simply dies. Whatever the issue, at that point the unprepared probably will start swearing, invoking the gods of hardware, sacrificing chickens and, eventually, drinking heavily. We did.

Data-intense, design-simple graphics

Say you're writing a report on how your Web site's sales system has been performing, and you want to show the VP of sales the important statistics. You could hit her with one big graph or a set of graphs created in Excel, but you know she's not going to focus on anything that is too techie looking. Even so, you want to get the information into her brain as easily as possible.

Vista, not improving security?

Longtime reader and correspondent Phil Daley, a developer for a software vendor, dropped me a line saying he's three weeks into a four-week project to evaluate one of his company's products on Windows Vista. The goal is to identify any problems and recommend changes and fixes.

Is Windows XP dipping into spyware?

The following comment from a privacy forum was posted to a list I subscribe to: "A recent Microsoft update to Windows XP, which modifies the tool that verifies the 'validity' of XP installations to ensure that they are not illicit, may itself be considered to be spyware under commonly accepted definitions."

How to survive in IT

So you have decided on a career in IT instead of, say, being a dancer on Broadway or becoming a fugu chef in Japan. Given that you consider IT more interesting than appearing in 50,000 performances of "Oliver" and less risky than serving up potentially lethal sushi, what should you know about not just surviving but prospering in the fast paced and exciting world of information technology?

Dealing with crazy corporations

I've just seen the most remarkable documentary called "The Corporation", which is based on a book by Joel Bakan called The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power.

More truths about IT

Following my last column "The truth about IT," Anon dropped me a line suggesting an addendum to Item 5, "Security is a pipe dream": "5a. The manager busting your [hump] for 'military-level security' is going to complain loudly the first time the system says he needs to change his password and he discovers he cannot change it right back to his son's name."

The truth about IT

We all love IT. Even though some of us might not like our jobs, it is next to impossible to be in the IT world without having some kind of passion about the whole idea of working with computers and information.

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