Daily News Archive

Please note that The Daily News is publishing (hopefully) twice a week for the foreseeable future due to time constraints.

Monday, September 18th

"He who wishes to fight must first count the cost. When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be dampened. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor dampened, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue... In war, then, let your great object be victory, not lengthy campaigns.” – Sun Tzu

 

The Picks of the Day

Bush 'prepares emissions U-turn'

“President Bush is preparing an astonishing U-turn on global warming, senior Washington sources say.  After years of trying to sabotage agreements to tackle climate change he is drawing up plans to control emissions of carbon dioxide and rapidly boost the use of renewable energy sources.”

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article1604092.ece

 

The Cheap Revolution

“Coleman is one of dozens of new barbarians plotting the Cheap Revolution, the wholesale shift by corporate customers and techmakers to cheap chips and open-source (often free) software such as Linux. They are embracing simplicity, unlocking prodigious new power and cutting tech costs by up to 90%, threatening the Silicon Valley plutocracy…”

http://www.forbes.com/business/global/2006/0918/114.html

 

Sarbox 404: The New Feeling-Out Period

“Next year, many finance executives will likely be able to take a sabbatical to get their companies' internal controls up to snuff far from the annoying questions of independent auditors. But the executives shouldn't avoid the auditors either, Securities and Exchange Commission officials says.”

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/7905549/c_7908804?f=ThisWeekInFinance091506

 

IT Process Improvement

Webcast:  Using ITIL to Improve Sarbanes-Oxley Processes

October 31, 2006 (2 p.m. EST, 11 a.m PST)

“Many organizations have experienced cost and frustration associated with some of the processes that they have implemented to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. ITIL offers many comparison processes that groups can leverage to improve their efficiency and effectiveness.”

http://cp.jupiterweb.com/index.php/3051_default/6036d693e5531837e1881e9af496afbf

 

Webcast:  The Impacts of Outsourcing on ITIL Initiatives

September 25, 2006 (2 p.m. EDT, 11 a.m PDT)

“The need to outsource and implement ITIL are tandem agendas that many organizations face. To be successful, they need to be managed with the proper perspectives in mind.”

http://cp.jupiterweb.com/index.php/2606_default/f6b43f7439c13d42ce47c70c7d2f2215

 

Legal and Regulatory Compliance

Unintended Consequences Of Sarbanes-Oxley

“The greatest cost of Sarbanes-Oxley is derived from the law of unintended consequences. Nonprofit organizations, foreign-registered corporations, and others that are not directly covered by the new law worry that they are caught in the web of Sarbanes-Oxley. A law aimed at reinforcing faith in American financial securities has ensnared many entities not involved in those securities.”

http://www.nysun.com/article/39828

 

The Real Source of SOX Woes

“Sarbanes-Oxley is about restoring investor confidence in publicly traded companies by attempting to ensure that the financial reports that they present to the investing public are accurate.  As a result, public companies have been forced to review and implement controls to help ensure that risks to the financial reporting process are properly managed. Of course, fraud and malicious activities get a lot of trade press and management attention, but the far greater risk to the integrity of financial reporting is human error.”

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/netsys/article.php/3632016

 

Sarbanes-Oxley faces changes from U.S. group

“A private-sector group with ties to the Bush administration has been formed to recommend changes to the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other regulations seen by critics as hindering the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets, it was announced Tuesday.”

http://money.cnn.com/2006/09/12/news/economy/sarbane_oxley.reut/?postversion=2006091215

 

Mexico's Salinas Settles Sarbanes-Oxley Suit

“Ricardo Salinas Pliego, who made his fortune in television, retail, and cellular services, and is one of Mexico's more colorful billionaires, reached a settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week in the first lawsuit against a foreign company under the rules of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.”

http://www.forbes.com/2006/09/15/salinas-azteca-sec-face-cx_cn_0915autofacescan03.html

 

Security and Risk Management

Hacker Discovers Adobe PDF Back Doors

“David Kierznowski, a penetration testing expert specializing in Web application testing, has released proof-of-concept code and rigged PDF files to demonstrate how the Adobe Reader program could be used to launch attacks without any user action.”

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2016606,00.asp

 

How spammers identify their targets

The author reports - “Personally, I spent some time the last few weeks looking at spam and learning about how it is created and how it spreads. What I found was a very interesting and clever process that would-be spammers use to identify targets.”

http://security.itworld.com/4774/nls_security_spam060817/page_1.html

 

Human Error / Safety

Global warming evident as mayors gather for meeting

“Portage Glacier, a major Alaska tourist destination near Anchorage's southern edge, has retreated so far it no longer can be seen from a multimillion-dollar visitors center built in 1986.”

http://www.theolympian.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060917/OUTDOORS/609170393

 

Losing It, 200 Miles Above the Earth

“In space, junk can kill.  The Basics: To Find the Bacteria, Follow the Water (September 17, 2006) When two bolts slipped away from spacewalking astronauts last week, astronauts and controllers expressed concern that the small objects might have floated into the moving parts of the $372 million truss that had just been added to the station.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/weekinreview/17basic.html?ex=1316145600&en=032c7917f3ba4332&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

 

Flu pandemic could cost global economy up to US$2 trillion: World Bank

“The World Bank estimates that a severe flu pandemic could cost the global economy up to US$2 trillion, or 4.8 percent of the world's gross domestic product.”

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/060918/5/singapore230948.html

 

Outsourcing / Globalization / International

China and India 'boosting Africa'

“China and India's growing trade and investment in Africa holds great potential for African economic growth, a World Bank report has said.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5350764.stm

 

News flows like water - even in China

“Beijing leaders are looking more like King Canute, the English monarch who ordered the tide to retreat. Their attempts to ban certain types of news seem downright silly to those Chinese who now thrive on global flows of information in a buzzing economy.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0918/p08s01-comv.html

 

Outsourcing: It’s Been Good to Him

“The important thing about outsourcing or global sourcing is that it becomes a very powerful tool to leverage talent, improve productivity and reduce work cycles. The West is not producing enough engineers. The United States will produce 75,000 engineers this year; they will produce more sports therapists than engineers. Germany, the great engineering power of Europe, will produce 35,000 engineers this year; they will produce more architects than engineers. Western companies want access to Indian talent, that is why they outsource, that is why they come to India to set up base.“

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/16/business/16interview.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1158592045-7q+s3d18yPZVkHtjDHAqvw&oref=slogin

[This is a very interesting article.]

 

American and European companies finally have realized the bad side of outsourcing moving out of India and China and coming closer to customer bases : IBM study

“A recent survey by IBM’s consulting arm will show on Monday that American and European companies are eager to get out of India and China. They are planning to pull out to make sure they can be closer to their markets, suppliers and decision-makers rather than just looking for a low-cost base.  The days of cheap labor India and China are gone. Indid and China now face the daunting challenge to match the skill levels of America and Europe.”

http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/13235.asp

 

Economics / Business / Misc.

Who's Shaping The Mobile Future?

“Sprint Nextel …, T-Mobile, Vodafone, NTT DoCoMo, China Mobile, Orange and KPN want to use the influence of the Next Generations Mobile Networks (NGMN) initiative to shape the development of next-generation wireless networks.”

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/netsys/article.php/3632326

 

Trade deficit at second highest level ever

“America’s deficit in the broadest measure of foreign trade increased in the spring to the second highest level in history, reflecting a big jump in payments for foreign oil.”

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14890878/