Peter Coffee

Internet attacks are a form of a public health problem, and this months Top 20 list of Internet security risks offers tactics to contain this costly and potentially contagious nuisance. Like the cold-causing rhinovirus, most Internet attacks are spread through routine social contact (albeit electronic, rather than physical). Like Internet attacks, conversely, the rhinovirus comes […]

When New Yorks trading floors closed following Septembers terrorist attacks, financial Web sites lost their data streams—with revealing results. For example, the financial page at Netscape.com (see chart) reported alarmingly that the Dow Industrials had opened the day at zero, with results last updated at “NaN p.m.” Nonprogrammers might well have wondered, “Why NaN?” NaN, […]

When Ive taught MBA classes in quantitative methods, Ive always had a hidden agenda. Yes, the syllabus has always included linear programming, forecasting and other number-crunching techniques. But Ive always managed to tuck in extra material on game theory, or “decision making with an active opponent” (to use the formal label). IT decisions must reckon […]

We dont know if Abraham Lincoln actually said that the right length for a mans legs is “long enough to reach the ground.” Were sure, however, that the right length for a software users manual is long enough to explain but not so long as to confuse. But Microsoft has a different rule: The total […]

Some experts on human behavior say it takes about 21 days to establish a habit. Others say it takes only three to 10 days to start a habit but 30 days to stop one. Will a summer of staying home due to tight travel budgets, compounded by an autumn of crippling delays, break U.S. knowledge […]

Software quality assurance can be applied at any point in the pipeline that connects a users need with a deployed solution. The choice of where to put that pressure must balance concerns of schedule, cost and business reputation. Design time is the highest leverage point in terms of least effort to prevent greatest harm. Modern […]

Why do people call computer experts “wizards”? or “gurus”? Or other names suggesting magical powers? What happens when the magic runs out? In his 1992 novel, “Snow Crash,” Neal Stephenson compares these modern labels to the ancient Sumerian culture. We have a mainstream work force, he suggests, that is illiterate or aliterate, dependent on TV […]

Ask Motorolas engineers what they did on their summer vacation. The day after Labor Day, the company announced it had succeeded in growing layers of high- performance gallium arsenide on a foundation wafer of less expensive, physically tougher silicon. More than a cool science project, this development promises lower costs for optical communication hardware, as […]

Its easy to list the tools that were used in horrific acts and to argue that depriving ourselves of those tools will prevent future similar incidents. Its easy, but its wrong. Following last weeks terrorist attacks on symbols of U.S. economic and military strength, the IT community needs to help the nation focus on mitigating […]

The most appropriate icon for the proposed combination of Hewlett-Packard and Compaq might well be the Hindu god Shiva, multiarmed symbol of destruction and rebirth. With nearly parallel product lines, a combined HP-Compaq holds out in its many hands a potentially confusing variety of choices for enterprise IT buyers—who fear confusion almost as much as […]

Have you ever bought a car because it had an 8,000-rpm engine? No, you havent. So why would you ever buy a PC because it has a 2GHz CPU? Processor clock speed measures how hard the CPU is being flogged, not how much work it does. As chips depend on ever-more-complex logic (such as Pentium […]

Among California-based, high-tech companies, the strongest brand belongs to—may I have the envelope, please—Hewlett-Packard. According to Connecticut-based Corporate Branding, HP is outranked only by Honda, Toyota and (in first place) Disney. The rankings reflect familiarity and favorability ratings by vice presidents and more-senior executives in the top 20 percent of U.S. corporations. Intel is No. […]