Free Republic

Firewalls set to become illegal in many American states Legislation by the ignorant By Staff at the Newsdesk: Friday 28 March 2003, 13:21 AN INTERESTING PIECE of news has surfaced that will have sys admins fainting in disbelief. Eight states have put forward bills that would have a devastating effect on network security and even networks themselves if they come to pass. The wording in the bills is dumb enough that firewalls could become illegal. The news about the bills was brought to our attention by Edward Felten, more famous for having a go at a different Bill. The states...

<p>Texas Instruments breaks new ground with its bundling of three technologies into a single chipset.</p> <p>Back in September, I wrote a column lauding Texas Instruments for its breakthrough designs that reduced from four to one the number of chips needed to operate a cell phone. Looks like the company is at it again.</p>

Goldman's Latest Tech-Spend Survey Shows Less Optimism By Donna Fuscaldo of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Spending on technology gear may finally be stabilizing, but hopes for an actual improvement this year could be premature, according to a survey of technology executives. In Mid-February, investment company Goldman Sachs polled technology buyers to gauge their views of the information technology spending environment. What the survey found is many executives expect information technology spending to increase 1% in 2003. While any growth would be viewed favorably given last year's declines, it is still lower than the 2% to 3% growth tech...

Tech M&A Premiums Show Air Still Seeping Out Of Bubble By Janet Whitman Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--Nearly three years after the burst of the dot-com bubble, the air continues to seep out of the once high-octane technology sector. Highlighting the ongoing slump in the value of technology companies, premiums paid for mergers and acquisitions in the computer sector have slipped to their lowest level since the tech boom went bust in March 2000, a new report released Thursday shows. Acquirers paid an average multiple of 1.69 times annual revenue for computer software, supplies and services companies,...

Equipment test manufacturer Agilent Friday said it will have to fire even more of its employees to remain profitable for the rest of the year. During its first quarter earnings report, the Palo Alto Calif.-based company, which spun off from Hewlett-Packard (Quote, Company Info) in 1999, said it will cut an additional 4,000 jobs, or 11 percent of its work force. Back in November, the company eliminated 2,500 jobs in November and 8,000 jobs in late 2001. Agilent had 35,000 employees before the cuts. "Our first quarter results were disappointing," said Agilent chairman, president and CEO Ned Barnholt. "Orders were...

<p>SANTA CLARA, California -- The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is threatening innovation in Silicon Valley, and it's time for businesses and consumers to mobilize to change the law.</p> <p>That was the message at the Digital Rights Summit here on Wednesday. Intel hosted the event at its Santa Clara headquarters with Digitalconsumer.org, an organization dedicated to protecting consumers' fair-use rights with regard to digital media.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - Top state officials Friday urged the creation of a board to oversee information-technology purchases, while also making a rare public admission that many of those who negotiate state contracts are unprepared for the job.</p> <p>At a news conference, the governor's top technology adviser proposed a new technology oversight panel as a way to protect taxpayers from a repeat of the Oracle software contract debacle.</p>

Is WiFi (Wireless Fidelity) here to stay or merely a passing fad, ripe for replacement by more flexible and capable technologies?There is no doubt that it is one of the hotter developments of the past year endorsed by a string of leading companies including International Business Machines, Intel and Microsoft. It is expected to a be a powerful talking point at the Cannes 3GSM World Congress this month.The Boston Consulting Group says it: "threatens to spark a new revolution in the telecommunications industry." WiFi products are already numbered in the hundreds and some pundits predict it could undermine the...

US Customs and the Federal Bureau of Investigations are looking into the possible transfer of thousands of Sony PlayStation 2s from US retail stores to Iraq, military intelligence sources have reported. An astounding 4,000 PlayStation 2s have apparently been shipped to Iraq in the last two to three months, according to a secret Defense Intelligence Agency report. With the under-whelming shipment of PS2s that have hit North American shores, this recent news makes strange sense. But is this the real reason that Sony can't meet US gamers' demand? Or is the news really real at all? According to the news...

Warships will feature 802.11b wireless systems, allowing captains to command the entire ship from anywhere on board. Wireless LANs are being installed on Navy warships to free up manpower, reduce crew sizes, and improve monitoring of a range of mechanical and electrical systems. The installation effort, dubbed Total Ship Monitoring, lets Navy crew members check and control systems from computers anywhere on board. It's an extension of the Smartship refitting and redesign program the Navy launched in 1996 to let captains command their ships from anywhere on board. The USS Howard, a guided-missile destroyer commissioned in 2001 and assigned to...

A Hong Kong computer game enthusiast has been found slumped dead at a terminal in a game centre after playing non-stop for hours, police said on Sunday. The 28-year-old was found slumped at his screen early on Saturday after he apparently had played the online game Diablo II since early Friday evening. A policeman found him in the game centre shortly after 1am, five hours after he began playing the popular game, according to reports. His death at a game centre in Hong Kong's Yuen Long district came eight months after a 17-year-old game centre employee was found dead after...

Ever tried to copy the text from an Adobe PDF document, in order to post some hot info on the Free Republic? I'll bet that you discovered that when you opened the document with your browser, you just couldn't close the deal when it came to selecting the text and copying it to the clipboard. Here's the secret: download the PDF in question to your hard drive using 'Save Target As...'. Then, open the document directly from the save directory on your hard drive, or using the Adobe application. You'll be cutting and pasting in no time. Further hot tip:...

Linux has emerged as the darling of the "technical crowd" but interest is more emotional than realistic, according to Meta Group analyst Kevin McIsaac. In a research paper released this week, McIsaac says interest in Linux is based on a "questionable" lower total cost of ownership (TCO) argument. Consider All Costs "The Linux OS license is free but that does not ensure that TCO will be reduced; for example, Linux requires more staffing resources and effort to match the reliability, availability, and scalability of high-end Unix and Windows 2000 or XP servers," the analyst said. Users must purchase high-availability add-ons...

"Politics," essayist P.J. O'Rourke once wrote, "are a last resort." Now the technology sector, after having weathered disappointing quarter after quarter, is in dire need of something -- anything -- to get it back on its feet. In last week's election, it might have found a savior. While the political leanings of many digerati fall somewhere between radical libertarianism and extreme ambivalence, the CEOs who run technology companies and the organizations that represent them in Washington are eager for the new Congress to get under way. It's easy to see why: According to a CNET (CNET) News.com analysis, Senate Republicans...

NEW YORK — Sun Microsystems Inc. (SUNW) may cut up to 8,000 jobs, or about 20 percent of its work force, Merrill Lynch analyst Steven Milunovich said in a research note on Tuesday. Milunovich said that Sun, which makes sophisticated computers, could announce the job cuts this quarter. Sun, which reports earnings on Thursday, was not immediately available for comment. Milunovich is not the only Wall Street expecting headcount cuts at Sun. Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Toni Sacconaghi on Monday said that he expects Sun to cut between 4,000 to 8,000 people, which would put it in line with other...

September 5, 2002 An Alternative to Microsoft Gains Support in High PlacesBy STEVE LOHR overnments around the world, afraid that Microsoft has become too powerful in critical software markets, have begun working to ensure an alternative.More than two dozen countries in Asia, Europe and Latin America, including China and Germany, are now encouraging their government agencies to use "open source" software — developed by communities of programmers who distribute the code without charge and donate their labor to cooperatively debug, modify and otherwise improve the software.The best known of these projects is Linux, a computer operating system that Microsoft...

Found on website "hightechny.com" for unemployed NY tech workers: Location: Rochester, NY 14601 United States Education Required: Unspecified Description: We are looking for the best and brightest individuals across USA. Minimum 2 Years US experience required.1. SAP, PeopleSoft, Oracle Applications-ERP Consultants.2. Data Warehousing and BI Consultants.3. HIPPA Consultants with Mainframe experience.We openly discuss Bill Rate with you! No games. We pay our consultants high % of the Bill Rate.WE ARE SPONSORING H1B & TI VISAS. H1B HOLDERS WHO ARE WILLING TO TRANSFER THEIR VISAS MAY APPLY.The most important element that contributes to our overall success is the talent of our...

For Windows Users Only

REDMOND, Wash., July 24 — Two years into its quest to create a new kind of Internet-enabled computing it describes as .Net, Microsoft found it necessary to pause today and try to explain what it meant. One day before its annual conference for financial analysts, the company assembled its top executives before several hundred reporters and industry analysts and engaged in a tutorial that one participant referred to as ".Net for Dummies." The .Net brand (pronounced dot-net) is Microsoft's approach to a computer industry market called Web services. It has two basic ideas: to create standards that allow all...

XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX THU JUL 11, 2002 23:32:38 ET XXXXX 'USA TODAY' WEBSITE HACKED; PRANKSTERS MOCK BUSH, CHRISTIANITY The USA TODAY newspaper's website was broken into late Thursday evening by hackers who put up a series of stories blasting George Bush, Sercretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Christianity. Regular readers of the site could easily be misled because the hackers used the USA TODAY's basic design template, but multiple misspellings and bad grammar give away the prank. One headline entitled 'Bush proposes another new Cabinet post' linked to an article purportedly filed by the ASSOCIATED PRESS: Washington D.C. (AP)...