In praise of parasites

By Sean McGrath, ITworld.com

Although I do suffer from circumlocution, today I feel in the mood for some straight talking. Calling a spade, a spade, cutting to the chase etc. etc. Oops, I seem to be regressing...best...to...blurt it out...

The Law of the Parasite: "As an enterprise IT application approaches mission criticality, the probability of it being a host to one or more parasitic Enterprise Applications approaches 1.0."

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Diffie: Privacy laws could hurt the little guy

As a co-inventor of public key cryptography, Whitfield Diffie has been credited with making privacy possible in the digital age. In his day job as Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Chief Security Officer, he works out of a corner office in the Sun Labs. Though he describes his job as a "marketing" position, Diffie doesn't sound anything like a corporate pitch man. In this interview, he shares his thoughts on Microsoft, security, and privacy.

New hires, new network

By James Gaskin, ITworld.com

Take a look at the people being interviewed for jobs upon graduation this spring, or for internships this summer. Your network must upgrade, tear down and rebuild without dropping a packet, to accommodate them. Get ready.

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On the Soapbox

By Dan Blacharski

Microsoft has entered into the business of video sharing, competing with YouTube in providing a forum for people to post their short video clips. Now you can have yet one more site onto which you can post videos of your dog doing tricks, your baby blowing spit bubbles, or pirated clips of pop stars shaking their booties. Launched last week into public beta, the MSN Soapbox offering delivers the same concept as YouTube.

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More Blade disruptions

By James Gaskin, ITworld

By my count, the third blade server disruption phase is about to begin. First came the blade idea itself that almost died before the major vendors picked it up. Then came widespread acceptance and increased efficiencies, like the Smaller, Cooler Blades report last October.

The coming disruption? You will soon see all sorts of network equipment stuffed into blade chassis for a jump up in capacity and a jump down in price.

Read the full article here.

The next big programming language ... will not be a programming language

By Sean McGrath

I suspect that the next big thing might be one of those quantum leaps that happen from time to time. A game changing leap. What if the next big programming language was not so much a language as a language for creating languages?

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A new era in search

By Dan Blacharski

A startup called Powerset announced $12.5 million in first-round venture funding last week, and an aggressive plan to change the very nature of search technology. Of course, by Google standards, $12.5 million is pocket change, and Powerset has some very well-moneyed rivals to take on. But, on the other hand, successful tech companies have been launched with less, and I’ll give them credit for taking on the 800-pound gorilla. And of course, their technology is from Xerox PARC, which is by no means dollar-store technology.

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The next big programming language ... won't be a programming language

By Sean McGrath

The industry seems to be in one of its "Gee, I wonder what's next? What's the next Big Thing?" phases at the moment in the field of software development.

Why this should be happening now is an interesting question in itself. Let's spend a minute on that one before proceeding. It could simply be that the big guns of Cobol/Java/C++/C#/PHP/ASP/Perl/Python and so on have been around long enough for the industry to appear to be on some sort of stable plateau. If there is one thing that this restless industry is always bent on destroying, it is those nasty stable plateaux. The grass is always greener on the other side. Even if it isn't greener, it might be profitable so let's go there... (Apologies, cynicism crept in there for a moment!)

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Product Information Management

By James Gaskin

If you need a laugh, ask for details about a specific product your company makes or sells from the accounting, shipping, sales, and marketing departments. Dollars to donuts you won't believe they're all talking about the same product. Each department uses unique vocabulary and descriptions for each product. Now check your databases and see how confused the records are about that same product.

Hence the need for a Product Information Manager.

Read the full article here.

The Whac-A-Mole approach to information management

By Sean McGrath

Some time ago - actually quite some time ago - the amount of information that your average knowledge worker is expected to keep track of, disappeared over the horizon into the Land of Impossible Things. An important and clever trick has evolved - and continues to evolve - to help us deal with this Impossible Thing. We do it naturally, without even thinking about it. The fact that it comes naturally does not make it any less remarkable. In fact, it makes it even more remarkable. I speak of the process of monitoring for change.

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YouTube and the copyright dilemma

By Dan Blacharski, ITworld.com

As desirable as it is for YouTube to function as a vehicle for unknown emerging artists, YouTube must also survive in the long run, and allowing unknown artists to post their creations isn't going to make YouTube any money. YouTube wants partnerships with the major studios for professional content, and these partnerships are essential to its survival -- but to get the major studios on board, YouTube must not only comply with the take-down requests, but they must also take proactive steps on their own to make sure copyright infringement is kept to a minimum. YouTube has always complied with take-down requests made by copyright holders, but the bigger problem lies in when the same user, or another user, re-posts the same video after it has been taken down.

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Master Foo and the naming ceremony

By Sean McGrath

It was that time of year again on Pentimenti Mountain. The time of the annual naming ceremony. One disciple lucky enough to have an audience with Master Foo on naming ceremony day receives an extra honor from him. A name. A very special name. A venerable name that the disciple can forevermore use to identify themselves.

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IT most stressful?

By James Gaskin

My Sunday paper's JobCenter section had an interesting headline: 'IT Is Most Stressful Job, Survey Says.' Are folks in IT stressed? Sure. Are they more stressed than soldiers in Iraq? Is IT more stressful than the number two profession listed in the survey, which is Medicine? Probably not. So how did IT come to rank as the most stressful job?