Opinions
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Talking 'bout Y Generation 07 May, 2007 12:42:52
They’re the young and the restless — and they increasingly work for you. Their expectations aren’t the same as previous generations of employees, so maybe it’s time we starting listening to what they have to sayThere are some new kids on the block — and finding the best way to handle them is becoming a preoccupation for a coterie of Baby Boomer CIOs unused to dealing with such impetuous youth - +
Toxic Mix or Bit of a Mixed Blessing? 31 December, 2007 10:36:30
“Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog . . . ” The inter-generational office brew of Boomer, Gen X and Gen Y may not be quite as odious as that of the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but even so it makes “for a charm of powerful trouble”"Eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat, and tongue of dog . . . " The inter-generational office brew of Boomer, Gen X and Gen Y may not be quite as odious as that of the three witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth, but even so it makes "for a charm of powerful trouble" - +
Reconcilable Differences 06 August, 2007 13:03:30
Companies that ignore IT during a merger or acquisition do so at their own peril. Without a carefully considered and well-managed road map, IT risks an imperfect integration, loss of key staff, business disruption, and an unnecessarily complex environmentThe health-care company had been planning to install a state-of-the-art system, which would have been all but guaranteed to slash operational costs. It had completed the preliminary research, selected a system and begun the implementation process - +
It's Critical to Be Political 06 March, 2007 12:00:10
Navigating the choppy waters of organizational politics is a daily challenge for CIOs; some play shark and engage with other political creatures, but there are still plenty of CIOs acting like krill"Carefully." That was the one-word response from a high-profile CIO about how to chart and survive the political waters of a large enterprise. He did not want to elaborate, even anonymously. - +
Ticked Off at Tick the Box Mentality 04 February, 2008 13:01:15
Does your executive search firm know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?Does your executive search firm know its MIS managers from its elbow? Does it even know the difference between an MIS manager and a CIO, and if it does, can it explain that difference to its corporate clients?
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Bill Gates: A New Approach to Capitalism in the 21st Century 28 January, 2008 07:12:19
Transcript of Gates speech, and a Q&A at World Economic Forum in Davos, SwitzerlandAs you all may know, in July I'll make a big career change. I'm not worried; I believe I'm still marketable. I'm a self-starter, I'm proficient in Microsoft Office. I guess that's it. Also I'm learning how to give money away. - +
Can Macs conquer the enterprise? 11 January, 2008 10:55:53
The field is wide open for a Macintosh insurrection on the business desktop. It could happen, but probably won't. Here's why.If Apple were a football team, the New England Patriots would have had some serious competition this year. - +
More stupider user tricks: IT horror stories 08 May, 2007 08:50:23
Take heed; lessons awaitWhen it comes to royally derailing IT, nothing trumps the stupidity of those whom IT is meant to serve. And though the verdict's still out as to whether humanity is devolving toward Idiocracy, it's certain that folks are continually finding innovative ways to screw up IT's operations. - +
Living (and dying) with Linux in the workplace 22 March, 2007 14:20:46
A brief foray into Linux for the enterpriseAre you looking for a Windows alternative for serious office work? Many people are starting to wonder about their non-Microsoft operating system options, especially given Windows Vista's hefty hardware demands, upgrade costs and license restrictions. We've already examined using Mac OS X in the workplace; now, I take a hard look at Linux by using an enterprise distribution exclusively at work. I'm not simply playing with a test machine; I've been using Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10+ day in, day out to do my job as Computerworld's online managing editor in the U.S. - +
10 things we hate about laptops 16 November, 2007 12:40:09
Sure, laptops have revolutionized the way we compute. That doesn't mean they don't drive IT bonkers.Damaged. Lost. Stolen. Too big, too small. Insecure and unreliable. And just plain annoying. If you're in IT, there's just not much to like about laptops.
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Happy 2007 — here's hoping it will be a very good year for all of us. If nothing else, it will certainly be a notable year for CIO: locally we'll mark our 10-year anniversary and the US mother ship will observe a score. And, if you're really looking to feel old, the granddaddy of the stable, US Computerworld, is hitting the big four-O (CW Australia turns 30 next year). So bring out the champers and celebrate, right? Umm, let's maybe keep that cork in for the moment while we do spot of maths for the sake of discussion.
Let's go young and say that when US CW debuted in 1967 you were a mere whipper snipper of 20. Well, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to do the maths: today you're 60 (or close to it). With US CIO, I'm going to up the ante and figure that if you were the alpha dog of the IT department back in 1987, you were probably blowing out at least 35 candles on your birthday cake. That means in 2007 you'll be staring down 55 of them. Even erring on the side of young, and sticking with age 35 when the baby of the bunch — this publication — first landed on your desk, you'd be 45.
Okay, we've done the maths and what do the sums show? Looks to me like a set of readers who are pretty much the bookends of the Baby Boomer generation — the generation that moulded the IT department and gave rise to the CIO role. It's also the generation with its eye on the exit door. And, when you do go, you'll be leaving a noteworthy legacy: today technology largely underpins the business of any reasonable size organization and through the CIO has a seat at the table.
But in these nascent days of 2007, with the end of the first decade of the 21st century looming, I can't help but wonder if the Boomers (of which I am one) are leaving a sustainable IT legacy. Are we clinging too tightly to old technologist's views and models when the answers to next-generation business issues lie within a tech-savvy business, not a technology-centric group. Are CIOs prepping, not just their successors, but their IT departments in general, for a future where technology is not set apart, but is in fact a part of the business? And ultimately, how secure is that seat at the table for the next generation of CIOs, if today's CIOs do not plan for this very different future?
I don't deign to have the answers, but I'd like to suggest that as our time draws to a close, perhaps the Boomers' biggest and most important legacy will not be the paths we cleared, but the ones we point out for those who will follow us.
Meanwhile, let's pop that cork on the champers. You've done one helluva job thus far and are not yet out the exit door. It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings.
PS Check out the new CIO Web site (cio.com.au) if you haven't already. Awesome.
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CIO Live Podcast #79: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires Part II 05 October, 2007 06:00:00
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #78: Brent D Taylor, author of The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires 28 September, 2007 17:34:25
For his new book, The Outsider's Edge: The Making of Self-Made Billionaires, social researcher Brent D Taylor spent four years of intensive research investigating the psychological make-up and backgrounds of some of the world's richest men and women, including IT luminaries Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Steve Jobs. Taylor discovered that, despite working in different industries and coming from different upbringings, they all have one thing in common -- they are all outsiders. - +
CIO Live Podcast #77: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part III 21 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part three in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #76: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part II 14 September, 2007 07:00:00
Part two in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance. - +
CIO Live Podcast #75: Panasonic Speeds Up Trans-Pacific File Transfers, Part I 07 September, 2007 07:00:05
Part one in our three-part special report from CIO's sister publication Network World in the US, as Paul Desmond reports from the Network World IT Roadmap Conference in Santa Clara, California. With development teams in the US and Japan, Panasonic needed a more efficient way to move very large files between the two locations. Iben Rodriguez, IT consultant for Panasonic Research and Development, explains how a storage-area network and virtual server technology helped speed up WAN performance.
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Citibank debit card fraud highlights ATM vulnerabilities 08 July, 2008 08:17:53
'Back-end servers are kind of a joke,' and the trouble doesn't end thereMalicious ATM intrusions, such as the late-winter breach that resulted in the compromise of Citibank debit card data, are not at all surprising given the vulnerable state of many of the servers and other components involved in processing such transactions, according to some industry representatives. - +
How to not have your Web site hacked like Sony's 07 July, 2008 08:23:22
A SQL injection attack was used to plant malicious code on pages of two popular Sony Playstation games - SingStar Pop and God of War, reports security company Sophos. Hundreds of Web pages from other businesses have also been compromised.The US Sony Playstation Web site is the latest high-profile victim of a hacker attack on business sites that's spreading malware at breakneck pace, says a security vendor. - +
AG launches review into national e-security 07 July, 2008 11:07:49
Howard's security agenda dragged over coals.A review of Australia's top e-security projects lead by the Attorney-General's Department has been launched to scrutinise the Howard's government's $73 million E-Security National Agenda. - +
Selling zero-day exploits has a down side 07 July, 2008 10:16:36
There is an ongoing argument about the ethics of selling 0-day exploits on the open market: It helps if you don't sell exploits targeting the company you work for.Information Security can sometimes be a funny field to work in. Some days it seems as if anybody with their hands on unpublished exploit code can sell it for all they're worth, and others it seems that they are set to become the target of law enforcement and the companies the code affects. It does help if you don't work for one of the companies that is set to be affected by the exploits you are trying to sell and aren't trying to bootstrap a competing company in the process. - +
'I have a lost laptop horror story for you' 30 June, 2008 10:08:14
The devil of identity theft is in the details that follow...The devil of identity theft is in the details that follow: Russ Jones tells a tale of woe that isn't particularly dramatic -- or rare -- and yet it's exactly the kind of story that worries me enough to ignore my better judgment and buy identity-theft protection from my insurance provider.
VideoMate Vista E900F PCIe Dual Hybrid TV tuner Card_ The First and Only twins tuners card in the world 09 July, 2008 18:30:00
WatchGuard Unveils Vision of Extensible Network Security 09 July, 2008 16:53:00
Bridgewater Systems Wins Inaugural Internet Telephony 2008 Wimax Distinction Award 09 July, 2008 15:42:00
WD’s New My Book® Mirror Edition™ External Hard Drive Provides The Safest Place For Valuable Personal Content 09 July, 2008 15:00:00
Zepto release the Mythos, the 2nd installment in the Centrino 2 refresh 09 July, 2008 12:05:00
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