eWEEK Editorial Board

The decision by Microsofts Chinese Internet portal to filter words such as “Freedom” and “Democracy” from its search engine, returning error messages about forbidden speech instead, has stirred up a mini-tempest on certain Web sites and blogs. The decision of MSN China, a joint venture between a city-owned Shanghai investment company and MSN called Shanghai […]

Spyware has rapidly advanced from a minor nuisance to a serious problem, meriting the attention of the courts and Congress. In our coverage this week, we report that software vendors, including giants such as Symantec, Yahoo and Google, are fighting among themselves and with small sites such as Hotbar.com and WebSearch.com over what constitutes spyware, […]

When technology laymen look at enterprise information systems, they can easily misperceive a necessary tool as an instrument of criminal conduct. Two incidents in the past month illustrate the potential for misunderstanding. An appellate court in Minnesota ruled May 3 that “the presence of an encryption program” (the widely used Pretty Good Privacy, or PGP) […]

Hard on the heels of “Tiger,” Apples latest Mac OS X release, came a report in The Wall Street Journal that Apple is preparing to incorporate Intel chips into a forthcoming product. The story breathed new life into the recurring rumor that an x86-compatible version of OS X is in the works. If the report […]

In recent weeks, the unexpected appearance and disappearance of backup tapes have led to several embarrassing corporate scandals, illuminating the indispensable role of IT and sound IT management practices—especially tighter tape management policies. In all cases, the portability of tape, which has made it the medium of choice for off-site storage for decades, became a […]

Grid computing has been a hot topic for the past two years. but looking at things honestly, grid technology has not yet made much headway in the enterprise. It could be that a perception gap, which we wrote about in a February 2004 special report on grid adoption, still exists. There does appear to be […]

While Microsoft is still a leader among software manufacturers in the dubious category of product vulnerability to attack, recent studies show that the software vendor has gotten better at plugging security holes. The SANS Institute partially credits Microsofts Automatic Update feature in Windows, which automatically downloads and installs security patches, but the institute also warns […]

Microsoft, unique among IT vendors, has shown the ability to shepherd mass movements to new computing technology. The most obvious example is the migration to a visual desktop interface. There were alternatives, of course, such as OS/2 or Macintosh, but the visual metaphor became a ubiquitous corporate reality only with Windows 3.0. Similarly, Microsofts implementation […]

Walk around the elephant of the Internal Revenue Service, and like the six blind men of the fable, youll find a menagerie of beasts. Excessive complexity, concentration of sensitive data and recurring demonstrations of poor information security practices are among the unattractive aspects that might dominate ones perceptions from one angle or another—no matter how […]

During the past few weeks, the hottest issue for hand-wringing among pundits on, and would-be participants in, the open-source community has been open-source license proliferation. Computer Associates International has been making statements about the need for a new, modular open-source license, and the Open Source Initiative—the organization that blesses licenses as open source—is talking about […]

With attacks continuing to be launched in ever-increasing number, its easy to say IT systems are more threatened than ever. But the fact is, defensive weapons have multiplied as well—if only we will use them. Indeed, there are new enhancements to operating system security that should become important parts of every IT managers arsenal. Much […]

The United Nations working group on Internet governance meets in Geneva next week to continue its work to define how it thinks the Internet should be run and by whom. The group, set up by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last year, is due to deliver a report in July that will outline the steps the […]