Coop's Corner

It's Coop's -30- column: Adios, sorta

Charles Cooper — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:28:00 PDT

It's a stylistic flourish that dates back to the days when reporters would file stories they typed out on typewriters. (Quick show of hands: How many of you still know how to change typewriter ribbons? OK, how many of you worked with typewriters in the first place? Never mind.) ...

To catch a (cyber) thief: It's not easy

Charles Cooper — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:19:00 PDT

SAN FRANCISCO--The FBI agent whose undercover sting operation led to the dismantling of an international cybercrime ring believes that increasing transnational police cooperation is turning the tide against digital criminals.

J. Keith Mularski, a special agent who works in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Cyber Division, says that when ...

I'm officially dropping out of the Twitter gab fest

Charles Cooper — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:42:00 PDT

Back from vacation and it's grand to see that the blabosphere's obsession du jour with all things Twitter remains as rabid as ever. For a while, at least, I suppose it elbows aside the other obsession du jour--the truly distressing state of newspaperdom--at least until word of the ...

Telcos said testing plan to offer PCs to businesses

Charles Cooper — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 04:00:00 PDT

Telecommunications providers on four continents are testing a plan to provide so-called virtual desktop computing to their business customers.

People familiar with the outlines of the pilot program say the idea is to offer Internet access to companies via dumb terminals connected through the so-called cloud. The tests are said ...

The world is flat. So what's our problem?

Charles Cooper — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:45:00 PDT

This is shaping up to be quite a winter of discontent. Mass layoffs at home and mass demonstrations abroad have combined to foster a seething desperation around the world that would have warmed the cockles of Dickens' Madame Defarge.

But shouting "off with their heads" only gets you so far. ...

First GM, now Silicon Graphics. Lessons learned?

Charles Cooper — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:34:00 PDT

It was to be expected. When a one-time tech powerhouse winds up bankrupt and sold off for chump change, that's bound to ignite the daily bloviation fest.

So it was that one and all are today offering their dutiful ruminations on the cosmic import of SGI's acquisition by Rackable Systems ...

LotusLive Engage: IBM's cloud gets social

Charles Cooper — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 17:00:00 PDT

In the 1990s, Lotus Notes gained notoriety, in part, for the nifty collaboration features it brought to corporate e-mail. IBM's CEO at the time, Lou Gerstner, was so impressed that he paid a premium to consummate what began as a hostile tender to buy Lotus in 1995.

Notes went ...

LongJump to foster private clouds for corporate IT

Charles Cooper — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:01:00 PDT

As cloud computing edges forward in fits and starts, one recurring question is whether more companies will opt to put their IT services on so-called public clouds or private ones.

The former are available to any individual or business, which essentially rent out a menu of scalable resources. That's ...

Infosys co-chair: Mistake to erect protectionist barriers

Charles Cooper — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:23:00 PDT

Faced with a growing protectionist backlash in the United States, the co-founder of one of the world's biggest IT outsourcing companies remains confident that the political controversy over exporting technology jobs overseas will ebb.

Infosys co-chairman: Nandan Nilekani

"Given the economic climate, there will always be protectionism. When the ...

How new tech standards wind up stillborn

Charles Cooper — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:21:00 PDT

What's it gonna be: my cloud or yours?

If you have the stomach, revisit the heated debates over how Unix or Web services should develop. Strong companies and strong personalities dominated the arguments. Ultimately, Web services flourished while the Unix standard fragmented, ending up with proprietary versions that ...