Management

Who are IT's substance abusers? That is the question that Don addresses in this week's editorial.

Computerworld Editorial's blog

The automated attendant at the VA San Diego Medical Center is so .... '90s. The prerecorded message presents callers with this intriguing message ...

IBM just gave a new lease on life to the system formerly known as the AS/400.

Consultant pilot fish gets a panicked call from a client: "Everything was working fine. We went into a meeting, and when we came out, nothing worked." And client insists no one did anything else.

Conventional wisdom is that security spending will be sheltered from economic volatility. But not according to a Goldman Sachs survey of 50 CSOs.

You'd think that sooner or later even Microsoft would learn there's a right way and a wrong way to do things. But whenever it has a choice it persists in choosing the wrong way. There are lots of smart people who work there. Didn't even one of them think bribery and corruption maybe weren't the best way to get the company's OOXML document format declared an international standard?

Census Bureau, Harris Corp. fail to resolve requirements dilemma

One vendor argues Flex and other Web 2.0 tools can make enterprise apps more engaging to users and, therefore, more successful for the business.

This manufacturing company has an application that's used by the people packing products into boxes, and it's worked fine for several years — but suddenly a new employee reports a problem.

There's some ... well, let's call it playfulness among the project managers at this manufacturing company -- and right now their favorite target is a new co-worker.

At this government agency's programming office, there's a legal requirement that a PC lock itself after 15 minutes of inactivity. And this pilot fish has found a way to enforce it.

Ben Worthen of the Wall Street Journal does a very good breakdown of the obstacles that the iPhone faces in the IT department. Not the least of which is that it is new and users want it unconditionally...and they don't care what IT has to say - which doesn't ever sit well with IT.

To paraphrase the article...

Rabbits, white rabb-it's IT Blogwatch: in which the world goes to heck in a handbasket. Not to mention Portal in Flash...

Sir Richard Branson is over the moon:

I'm delighted today to announce Virgle, Inc., a joint venture between the Virgin Group and Google ... [its] goal is simple: the establishment of a permanent human settlement on Mars. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and I feel strongly that contemporary technology is sufficiently advanced to make such an effort both successful and economical, and that it's high time that humanity moved beyond Earth and began our great, long journey to explore the stars and establish our first lasting foothold on another world ...

The government is sending some money your way. Before you blow it on the latest toy to catch your eye, what about that toy you never got twenty years ago? It's not too late!

You can beat Internet sabotage. Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia did -- and it didn't require rocket science, either.