Parliamentary reporter, Computing, Friday 30 January 2009 at 10:33:00

MP calls for extra help to bridge the digital divide

The government has been urged to investigate creating a "social tariff" for broadband access to prevent the digital divide widening as the proposed universal service obligation (USO) for 2Mbit/s broadband is rolled out.

Glasgow North West Labour MP John Robertson launched the proposal after the announcement of the commitment to a USO by 2012 by culture secretary Andy Burnham.

"The city I represent has the lowest take-up of broadband in the UK and making sure socially excluded and disadvantaged people are not left behind must be a central consideration of the strategy," said Robertson, chairman of the all-party Parliamentary Group on Communications.

"Social tariff schemes have not been a high-profile issue in communications but I think this is the direction we will need to go in.

"Requiring broadband to be accessible doesn't guarantee take up which is the key measure - the divide in communications is in large part the financial divide in the country."

Burnham said earlier that one of the objectives was "to ensure fair access for all and the ability for everyone to take part in the communications revolution".

He added that this was "crucial to delivering the government's policy of an inclusive society where new opportunities are available to all and nobody is left behind".

Angelica Mari, Computing, Friday 30 January 2009 at 09:48:00

Call centre jobs go as mail orders dwindle and online sales rise

Some 1,000 jobs will be cut at catalogue retailer Shop Direct Group as the company decided to close one of its call centres due to a decline in orders via telephone.

The company has another six call centres across the UK and said that the decision to close down the facility in Crosby is due to the growth of internet sales and the consequent lower volumes of calls taken by customer service agents.

Additionally, a further cull affecting 150 workers will take place at the company's head office in Liverpool as well as two other sites. Reportedly, 250 of the staff affected will be offered relocation.

Online sales represent around 56 per cent of the revenue at Shop Direct and the retailer anticipates that the channel will account for 70 per cent of sales by 2010-11.

This month, the firm announced it would give a sharper focus to its web operations, starting with an implementation of an e-commerce platform across its multiple brands to improve customer loyalty.

Wowsers writes "First the tech illiterates in the UK government want to extend broadband internet connections to every home, whether it makes sense or not, then at the same time they propose a £20 per year (approx $29US) broadband tax which they claim will pay the record and film industries for their failed business models. Coincidence the two proposals are linked? And why should people be forced to pay for the failed film and music industries?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

carlmenezes writes "It seems that the DRM on the PC version of Gears of War came with a built-in shut-off date; the digital certificate for the game was only good until January 28, 2009. Now, the game fails to work unless you adjust your system's clock. What is Epic's response? 'We're working on it.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

An anonymous reader writes "Thailand is ramping up their media wide censorship of anything that remotely offends Thai royalty. In the last three weeks, another 2,300 websites have been blocked. Another ~4,000 are soon expected. And not just websites, but books as well as the Economist have been blocked. And anyone caught publishing such material, including foreigners, will get 3 to 15 years in a Thai prison. You don't want to be in a Thai prison!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes "It's often assumed that representing data reaches a limit when you get to the point that an atom represents one bit in some form or fashion. But Stanford University researchers have used a quantum hologram model to store the characters 'S' and 'U' by encoding the data at a rate of 35 bits per electron."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A mole's dream

Security researchers have identified two critical holes in Novell's GroupWise WebAccess, the web front end for the company's email and employee collaboration package, that allow malicious hackers to steal user messages with ease. All supported versions of the program are vulnerable.…

pgpark writes "I've been working as a key resource for a small IT consulting firm in the US. While the job has been interesting and the company's growth quite impressive over the last few years, it's been almost half a dozen years now and being ready for something new, I was ready to quit for consulting. It looks like the CEO would prefer to see me stay, as she is offering me ten percent of shares in the company in exchange for five additional years of my services. So the big question for me now is 'should I stay or should I go now?' Have you guys on Slashdot ever been dealing with such a situation? What points would you consider in order to make your choice?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Profits at online retailer Amazon rose 9% in the final three months of last year, as the company enjoyed robust holiday sales.

ndogg writes "While other companies are throttling their services, and capping bandwidth, Charter Communications, the cable company, is launching a 60/5 Internet service, starting in St. Louis, MO. It's certainly not cheap, starting at 129.99 per month (add another 10 if it's not being bundled with television or phone.) Currently, it's the fastest down stream speed available, and being a cable company, they potentially have greater reach than FiOS." However, there may be a risk to putting too much money down on this service; Charter Communications as a company faces some serious financial problems right now. As reader Afforess writes, "rumors abound that Paul Allen may just cut his losses and run," by selling the company. (Allen is the majority stockholder.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Spy boss laptop seized as evidence

The CIA's top officer in Algeria has been recalled to Washington amid accusations he drugged and raped two women at his Algiers residence.…

the4thdimension writes "While we may not be beaming up to the Enterprise anytime soon, a team of scientists from the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan have managed to teleport information between two atoms up to a meter apart. Until this point, only very tiny distances were able to be traveled. However, using a complicated system of photons, ions, lasers, and electromagnetics, scientists have managed to 'teleport' information contained on one atom to another atom that is in a separate sealed container. This can lead to a wide range of developments in computing and communications." Update: 01/29 22:29 GMT by T : Sorry, it's a dupe, but today's article in Time is better reading than the abstract anyhow.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

'Server Graveyard' narrowly averted

A fired computer engineer for Fannie Mae has been arrested and charged with planting a malicious software script designed to permanently destroy millions of dollars worth of data from all 4,000 servers operated by the mortgage giant.…

Official plans to prepare the UK's digital infrastructure for the future need fleshing out, say experts.

Bryan Glick, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 17:54:00

Demonstrations taking place at offices across Europe

Employees of HP and EDS have been demonstrating outside company offices across Europe today in protest at plans to cut 3,400 staff following the merger of the two suppliers.

Members of the Unite trade union took part in protests in London and Bristol as part of a European day of action also targeting sites in Austria, Belgium, Italy, Spain, France and Germany.

HP has said the redundancies have been caused by eliminating duplicated roles, but Unite claimed the move was “short term slash and burn indiscriminate cost cutting.”

"This is not about the credit crunch taking its toll again,” said Unite national officer Peter Skyte.

“HP/EDS is cutting a quarter of the UK workforce because this already rich company wants to increase its profits by indiscriminately cost cutting.”

US-CERT is aware of public reports of malicious code circulating via spam email messages related to Valentine's Day. These messages contain a link to a website that contains several images of hearts and instructs users to choose one image. If users click on one of the images, they will be prompted to download an executable file. Reports indicate that the executable files could be named: youandme.exe, onlyyou.exe, you.exe, and meandyou.exe (please note that these file names may change at any time). If users accept the download, malicious code may be installed onto their systems.

US-CERT encourages users and administrators to take the following preventative measures to help mitigate the security risks:

• Install antivirus software, and keep virus signatures up to date.
• Do not follow unsolicited links and do not open unsolicited email messages.
• Use caution when visiting untrusted websites.
• Use caution when downloading and installing applications.
• Refer to the Recognizing and Avoiding Email Scams (pdf) document for more information on avoiding email scams.
• Refer to the Avoiding Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks document for more information on social engineering attacks.

Alastair Behenna, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 01:00:00

IT leaders must launch a guerrilla war on the forces of mediocrity and complacency

As we all too vividly know, 2008 closed and 2009 opened in the midst of global stock markets plunging to their lowest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

These are truly desperate times for us all as businesses struggle to stay alive, let alone to prosper. A time for desperate measures. A time to declare war.

But this is a war to be declared on the mediocrity, greed and smug acceptance of the corrupted status quo that has brought us to this sorry point in our history. It's a time for IT to come into its own at last and show just what it can do to catalyse, stimulate and deliver real bottom-line numbers.

To paraphrase Andrew Bartels's report for Forrester Research: "Technology has become so interwoven into how a company operates that it's no longer considered discretionary spending. It is the muscle of companies. It allows them to do what they want to do."

These are my sentiments exactly. Let's start flexing these muscles and be determined to win.

Thus, onwards to war. How shall we proceed? Time to dust off our copies of Sun Tzu, Clausewitz and Mao Zedong and formulate the tactics and strategies for victory. For me it won't be a long drawn out process of classical warfare. I don't have the troops, the budget or the time to follow that model.

I propose using a carefully managed, highly mobile and targeted pattern of unconventional warfare using small groups of highly skilled and motivated individuals. What I envisage is more of an insurgency targeting multiple objectives than a costly and time-consuming approach regulated by overpowering methodologies and layers of command. I'm calling it Guerrilla IT and I will be focused on the topic for the foreseeable future or until the foe is vanquished.

Let me first sound a note of warning to any others brave enough to tread these paths to glory. It is my bitter experience that Guerrilla IT will be met, very rapidly, by Gorilla Business.

This is normally characterised by a flurry of territorial chest thumping, baring of teeth and an obstinate retreat to the perceived safety of a leafy nest several yards above the bedrock of reality. Do not be alarmed, turn away or show fear in any manner. It's perfectly normal and will be a minor skirmish if you've done your homework and shown you have the nerve to confront the situation.

The brutal reality of the global economy's current malaise adds leverage and power to your elbow­ – and remember you have the muscle. Use it.

In closing, remember that guerrilla tactics rely on morale, intelligence-led mobility, speed of effective response to changing situations, and the ability to blend in with the environment. Guerrillas believe in their objectives and have the courage of their convictions, enabling them to surmount the many obstacles in their way.

It is going to be a long and arduous campaign with some bitterly fought battles, not the least of which will be political, and while the primary objective will be to win the war and emerge victorious, the secondary consequence for IT will be the visibility and acceptance of the muscle and inherent value we bring to modern business.

For, as Carl von Clausewitz said: "To secure peace is to prepare for war."

PS: I've just realised that the acronym (beloved refuge for techies) for Guerrilla IT is GIT. My lovely wife tells me I have been a miserable old one of those for years so I should be admirably qualified to comment in the future. A luta continua!

For more comment from Harvey Nash CIO Alastair Behenna, see his blog at http://alastairbehenna.computing.co.uk

Alan Bowling, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 00:00:00

In hard times, IT needs to deliver more for less. Service-oriented architecture can make that happen, says Alan Bowling

In today's economic climate there is increased pressure on IT chiefs to do more with less. Service-oriented architecture (SOA) can make their life easier by significantly simplifying application and business process integration.

At a time when organisations are being hammered by a global downturn, SOA is a route to improved total cost of ownership. It can improve costs through increased efficiency, by building reusable services or capitalising on existing ones.

That said, many businesses have been slow to adopt SOA. Recent research from Gartner showed that planned SOA projects have halved in the past year, dropping from 54 per cent in 2007 to 24 per cent in 2008.

One issue appears to be a lack of understanding, as separate research from the SAP UK & Ireland User Group revealed that over half of UK organisations either didn't understand SOA or hadn't got a strategy in place to implement it.

There is definitely a clear need for organisations to be better educated about what SOA is and how best to implement it. One of the main problems with SOA has been that definitions of it have tended to be vague, which in turn has led to confusion about how organisations need to approach it.

IT decision-makers are increasingly finding that their systems are far too rigid to adapt to changing business needs, so there is a clear business case for SOA. It isn't an instant fix but, if SOA is approached in a business-oriented manner, it can take the complexity and rigidness out of technology, making it more agile and supportive of business goals.

Central to this is effective management and governance. Failure to set parameters can in fact lead to increased complexity and turn an organisation's applications and services into a tangled web.

However, a well-governed architecture can increase the speed of application and service delivery, meaning that organisations can react to market demands much more quickly, but importantly at reduced cost and disruption to the overall business.

Alan Bowling is chairman of the SAP UK & Ireland User Group

Rosalie Marshall, Computing, Thursday 29 January 2009 at 01:00:00

Moving away from the familiarity of Windows has provided several moments of uncertainty

As I am a technology journalist I perhaps should not admit this, but until recently,

I had been using the same beaten-up old laptop since my university years. It was perfectly capable of running the few simple applications I needed it to.

I did, however, realise that I looked something of an oddball as I sat in conference rooms full of reporters and delegates tapping away on the latest flashy devices.

Among that throng of laptop-wielding business users and journalists I had spotted a discernable shift in hardware use­ - more of them were turning up to industry events with MacBooks.

To me, Apple's sleek line of gadgets exudes a sense of the trendy and cool, but are they serious business machines?

I have always had a few doubts about buying a Mac. They seemed overpriced, some software applications are not Mac compatible, and from my limited use of Macs, I know that they take a bit of getting used to after a PC.

But I have overcome these quibbles, thanks to a recent visit to a duty free shop when suddenly price became less of an issue.

The compatibility problem has been more or less put to bed too, with utilities such as Parallels desktop for Mac and VMware's Fusion for Mac, which allow Windows applications to be used on the Mac desktop.

My first reactions to using my Mac should resonate well with those who have also made a relatively abrupt switch from using a PC. It is fair to say that my learning curve was rather steep.

The lack of a Start button, an inability to right-click using the trackpad, even maximising windows all threw me at first.

I was similarly flummoxed when it came to programs freezing. The trusty Ctrl-Alt-Del short cut has no effect. Instead, I had to learn about the marvels of the Force Quit function.

None of these quirks is a fundamental flaw and I have quickly grown accustomed to the new user interface.

But I was also lucky enough to have a bit of holiday time to get used to the system. I certainly would not advise any large group of business users to make the switch without undertaking proper familiarisation training first.

More comment at From The Newsdesk

Ad ranking scam or massive malware attack?

The compromise of legitimate websites with hostile code ultimately designed to serve up malware onto the PCs continues apace, with the latest victims including the Indian embassy in Spain.…