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The News - August 5, 2008
"Whoso neglects learning in his youth, loses the past and is dead for the future. ” – Euripides
Top Picks
IT failures roundup: Airports; jail system; angry travelers
“To describe more failures than one lone blogger could possibly investigate himself, here’s a new type of post: the IT failures roundup. I’ll periodically report on interesting failures using a brief, overview format.”
http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=943&tag=nl.e539
[ Call me twisted, but I thought this was a great post by Michael Krigsman @ zdnet. ]
Technology that's green from the roots up
“Many manufacturers are now giving heightened consideration to how their products affect the environment. As a result, they're building more products that require fewer resources to make and less power to run, contain less toxic material, and are a snap to refurbish or recycle.”
http://computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=322154
Google’s Knol
Take a look at Google’s take on Wikipedia – Knol.
http://knol.google.com/k#
Book Recommendation
The Logical Thinking Process by H. William Dettmer
This book is Dettmer’s continued work on explaining Goldratt’s Thinking Processes (TP). He sets for a methodical approach to help the reader understand this powerful set of tools. Included with the book is a licensed copy of the Transformation Logic Tree software for Windows.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0873897234?ie=UTF8&tag=georgespaffor-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0873897234
IT Audit / Internal Audit / Compliance
Deloitte Poll Sees Litigation Data Panic
“The survey showed that nearly 40 percent of respondents believed that the amount of data that is electronically stored for use in case of lawsuits has reached that unwieldy level. What's more, 17.5 percent said their companies are not ready to handle complex discovery requests.”
http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/11875637?f=alerts
IT Process Improvement / Quality Management
Archived Webinar: Implementing a Green Data Center
There are many social and real-world cost benefits when data centers can operate in a more environmentally friendly manner. With concerns over budgets and global warming, now is the time to address these issues. This webcast will cover a number of technical topics for energy savings in the data center. Topics include: virtualization, design of the cooling system, device power, and so on.
Access to this webcast and others is at: http://www.spaffordconsulting.com/webinars.html
Energy costs and data center complexity creating 'perfect storm,' says Avocent exec
“Soaring energy costs and the complexity of managing virtualization have changed the data center game and require IT to develop new management strategies.”
http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid39_gci1323735,00.html#
Security and Risk Management
Bioterrorism's Threat Persists As Top Security Risk
“It is cheap to do. It is easy to pull off. It is tough to respond to. And for all of those reasons, it remains one of the top concerns of security officials across the country, and one of their greatest frustrations.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121781124869708811.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
Another point in the article is that with all the work that has been done in biotech it will continue to get easier to create an attack. This stands with other observed situations that were coalesced into what people term “Spafford’s Adoption Rule” - For just about any technology, be it an operating system, application or network, when a sufficient level of adoption is reached, that technology then becomes a threat vector.
Black Hat Talk on Apple Encryption Flaw Pulled
“A security researcher who was set to speak at the Black Hat hacker convention in Las Vegas next week on a previously undiscovered flaw in Apple's FileVault encryption system has canceled his talk, citing confidentiality agreements with the Cupertino computer maker.”
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/07/black_hat_talk_on_apple_encryp_1.html
This Bug Man Is a Pest
“George Ledin teaches students how to write viruses, and it makes computer-security software firms sick.”
http://www.newsweek.com/id/150465?from=rss
Healthcare / Bio-Informatics / Care Delivery Organizations (CDOs)
Storing the Data Deluge
“If two trillion filing cabinets—or one billion terabytes—sounds like too much data to deal with, brace yourself. According to industry experts, health care data is increasing at such a rapid rate that by 2010, medical centers will need to be equipped to hold this massive volume of information.”
http://www.digitalhcp.com/2008/07/29/data-storage.html
Human Error / Safety / Environment
Old ships' logs show temporary global warming in 1730s
“This, Wheeler believes, shows that widespread rises in temperature of the kind recorded lately can be caused naturally. He thinks that human-caused carbon emissions are contributing to climate change now, but says it is unwise to link human emissions to specific events unless evidence is very strong.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/04/ships_log_climate_change/
Blunt answers about risks of global warming
“…as chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Pachauri has an urgent message for world leaders about the perils of global warming. He talked to the Tribune recently while he was in town to meet with Mayor Richard Daley and Chicago civic leaders.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-poi-pachauri_thinkaug03,0,6989806.story
Stinging Tentacles Offer Hint of Oceans’ Decline
“The faceless marauders are stinging children blithely bathing on summer vacations, forcing beaches to close and clogging fishing nets. But while jellyfish invasions are a nuisance to tourists and a hardship to fishermen, for scientists they are a source of more profound alarm, a signal of the declining health of the world’s oceans.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/science/earth/03jellyfish.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1217905409-ISUbn5CxApaxQpz0opxVKQ
Death in the Gulf of Mexico
“The mechanisms that create the dead zone are entirely natural — algae feeding and dying — but there is nothing natural about the zone itself. It is almost entirely an artifact of modern agriculture, accompanied by treated and untreated sewage and industrial runoff.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/04/opinion/04mon4.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Global News / Business / Economics
Brazil revives nuclear power plant
“The Brazilian government has authorized the company, Electronuclear, to go back to work on the nation's third nuclear power plant. Work on the Angra 3 reactor, near Rio de Janeiro, has been stalled for 22 years by a lack of money and political issues.”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/07/31/brazil.nuclear/index.html
Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
“Many economists argue that globalization will not shift into reverse even if oil prices continue their rising trend. But many see evidence that companies looking to keep prices low will have to move some production closer to consumers.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/business/worldbusiness/03global.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
US News / Business / Economics
Big Dog
“BigDog is the alpha male of the Boston Dynamics family of robots. It is a quadruped robot that walks, runs, and climbs on rough terrain and carries heavy loads. BigDog is powered by a gasoline engine that drives a hydraulic actuation system. BigDog's legs are articulated like an animal’s, and have compliant elements that absorb shock and recycle energy from one step to the next.”
http://www.bostondynamics.com/content/sec.php?section=BigDog
[ They have a video on this page showing a Big Dog unit moving around and going through tests. It’s amazing! ]
Bye bye baggage claim
“The skyrocketing price of fuel has already made it costly to fly, but now getting your luggage on board is pricier too, causing some travelers to consider sending it separately.”
http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/30/pf/luggage_delivery/index.htm?cnn=yes
Wal-Mart puts the squeeze on food costs
“With gas, grain, and dairy prices exploding, you'd think the biggest seller of corn flakes and Cocoa Puffs would be getting hit by rising food costs. But Wal-Mart has temporarily rolled back prices on hundreds of food items by as much as 30% this year. How? By pressuring vendors to take costs out of the supply chain.”
http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/28/magazines/fortune/kapner_walmart.fortune/index.htm
Worst inflation in 27 years trumps tax rebates
“Nominal spending grew 0.6% on the month, but the increase was all due to higher prices, which spiked 0.8% -- the most for any month since 1981.”
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/worst-inflation-27-years-trumps/story.aspx?guid=%7B5A153311%2D54CC%2D4AEA%2DA26D%2D09F2B841A4AE%7D&dist=TNMostRead
IBM Aims for the Clouds with New Green Data Center, Japanese Facility
“IBM today has announced to big projects for its cloud computing initiative. First and foremost, the latest addition to the company's Project Big Green is an estimated $360 million green data center in Research Triangle Park, N.C., which will highlight both the state of the art for energy-efficient data center design and provide cloud computing services to IBM's clients. Alongside that announcement, the company has also unveiled plans for its eighth cloud-computing-dedicated facility, this one located in Tokyo.”
http://www.greenercomputing.com/news/2008/08/01/ibm-cloud-green-data-center
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