Full disclosure overdue from high-tech analysts
497850
It was less than two years ago that Wall Street analysts Jack Grubman and Henry Blodget paid $19 million in fines and were banned from the securities industry for life to settle allegations that they'd promoted stocks like WorldCom and Global Crossing as the telecom companies swan-dived into an empty swimming pool. Shortly after that, in April 2003, 10 of ...
622348
InfoWorld - When I wrote my first InfoWorld article back in December 2001, I had absolutely no clue what I was talking about. Reading back over that masterpiece, "Dawn of the real-time enterprise," is scary. I didn't understand the technology, the acronyms, or how to filter out the inevitable vendor hype. I called friends to ask, what's J2EE? What's JMS? What's OLAP? And when they explained it, I pretended to understand, but still didn't.
432869
By JOE BEL BRUNO  NEW YORK - Investors have been waiting impatiently for four years for the high-tech sector to lead Wall Street to new heights, and they're likely to be cooling their heels for quite some time to come.
698403
(InfoWorld) - All's still not well in the higher echelons of Hewlett-PackardÂ as revealed in a filing the company made to the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). The brouhaha relates to the sudden andÂ unexpected resignationÂ of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Thomas Perkins from HP's board of directors in May. The co-founder of leading IT investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers, Perkins has strong ties to HP dating back to the 1960s when he ran the company's research department and including a previous stint on HP's board of directors from 2002 to 2004. Back in May, HP provided no reason for Perkins' resignation, but according to an 8-K filing HP made to the SEC Wednesday, he quit over concerns with the HP board's handling of investigations into leaks of confidential information. In the filing, HP confirms that the company has suffered "multiple leaks of confidential HP information," including information relating to the closed-door deliberations of its board, dating back to at least 2005. To try and stem the leaks and identify the culprit, HP turned to an external legal counsel who interviewed the board's directors in early 2005 and got each of them to recommit to their duty of confidentiality. The interviews didn't turn up the party responsible and the leaks continued. So, HP brought in an external specialized investigations firm which revealed that George Keyworth, an HP director since 1986, has been disclosing board deliberations and other confidential information to the media without authorization. Keyworth acknowledged he had leaked information at a board meeting on May 18 and the board asked him to resign. Keyworth refused to do so and at that point Perkins announced his own resignation, citing "personal frustration" with the chairman of the board in how the whole leaks investigation had been handled, the filing said. Perkins didn't like the matter being aired before the entire board and had believed he and HP Nonexecutive Chairman Patricia Dunn would handle the matter privately. On June 19, Perkins sought information from HP about the methods used to conduct the investigations into the leaks. According to the filing, he "asserted that phone and e-mail communications had been improperly recorded as part of the investigation." HP responded that there had been no recording or eavesdropping, but admitted "that some form of 'pretexting' for phone record information, a technique used by investigators to obtain information by disguising their identity, had been used." In pretexting, investigators call a phone company and use personal information to pretend to be someone else so as to gain access to that individual's phone records. After receiving the HP response, Perkins asked HP's nominating and governance committee to carry out an inquiry into whether the techniques used to conduct the investigation were appropriate. The vendor went ahead and engaged outside counsel, not previously involved in the earlier inquiries, to conduct such an investigation. The counsel discovered that a third party retained by the external consulting firm HP brought in to investigate the leaks "had in some cases employed pretexting." Such a practice, at that time, was not generally illegal, the counsel reported, but added that it "could not confirm that the techniques employed by the outside consulting firm and the party retained by that firm complied in all respects with applicable law." As a result, the HP committee recommended that controls relating to investigations be strengthened and that HP management ensure that all aspects of HP's investigations do comply with both applicable laws and HP's code of ethics. HP's board and Chief Executive Officer Mark Hurd have accepted the committee's conclusions. The U.S. Attorney General of the State of California has asked HP to supply information about the processes used in the leak investigation. "HP intends to cooperate fully with that inquiry," the vendor said in the filing. The SEC has also been in touch over the 8-K filing HP made when Perkins resigned, but the vendor has responded that it believes its disclosures back in May were "accurate and complete." In an Aug. 31 meeting, HP's board of directors determined that Keyworth shouldn't be nominated for another term on the board. According to a Wall Street Journal report, former HP Chief Executive Officer Carly Fiorina was deeply angered by the leaks since they revealed a gulf between her position and that of some of the company's board. She was laterÂ ousted from HPÂ in early 2005 and isÂ due to tell her side of the story in a bookÂ titled "Tough Choices" out in October.
417978
By Joe Bel Bruno Associated Press  NEW YORK - Investors have been waiting impatiently for four years for the high-tech sector to lead Wall Street to new heights, and they're likely to be cooling their heels for quite some time to come.
386604
This article discusses the discovery of compromised machines in large enterprise environments, and offers some suggestions on correlating NIDS and HIPS logs to avoid false positives.
227168
Many of the 11,000 tech executives and analysts flocking to San Francisco this week for the giant RSA security conference arrived eager to learn whether Microsoft will uncloak details of its plan to sell tech-security software.
294
Spotting the next disruptive technology, understanding the future and expecting less from insurance.
12685
Blog: Enhanced information isn't available for all cities yet, though.
81452
The leading vendors in the data warehousing market are running scared of new entrants to the market that are offering data warehouse appliances (i.e. pre-integrated hardware, software, storage combinations) that can offer greatly superior performance at a significantly lower price.  In this white paper we will dispel the 'fog of war' that currently pervades the data warehousing landscape, dismissing those question marks that are irrelevant and gratuitous, but highlighting any genuine issues that need to be addressed.
347403
No sense pointing the finger at Hewlett-Packard anymore; we have Congress and the FBI to do that. But I did want to discuss the âI didnât know what my employees/vendors/executive staff were doingâ defense -- which was, of course, made famous by Enron , so you have to know it just wonât do. Instead of looking backward, I spoke with a couple of experts on governance, privacy, risk, and compliance assessment about how companies can do the right thing in the future.
123991
A list of tech-industry questions that might get answers this year.
711669
One of the proverbial back stories of IT operations has always been the battle between the "suits" and the "techies." From the techie point of view, the hapless but disturbingly powerful suits are the business guys who put more thought into picking out hundred-dollar silk ties at Nordstrom than they put into million-dollar IT decisions. Worse, the suits gravitate towards outsourcing and service firms that implement big-dollar solutions. Many techies start on the other end of the spectrum with free open source solutions that reflect a substantial DIY ethic. Will the twain ever meet?
533826
Zacks.com releases the latest Analyst Interview. Today's  interview is with senior analyst Larry Orlowski, who discusses Microsoft  (Nasdaq: MSFT), HP (NYSE: HPQ), Dell (Nasdaq: DELL) and Intel  (Nasdaq: INTC).  A synopsis of today's Analyst Interview is  presented below.
701022
Searching for signal amid the noise of analyst upgrades and downgrades.
633065
HP, others talk about their new method of predicting markets, profits.
490872
In the past, I have taken great pride in informing you, my readers, about new and cutting-edge technology. Sometimes it is also necessary to re-examine existing or older technologies.