IT Industry Execs Slam Education, Dodge Offshoring
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

The battleground for the hearts and minds of the U.S. Congress was set earlier this month, when the Computer Systems Policy Project, an affiliation of CEOs in the high-tech industry that was founded in 1989 and champions the causes of these companies, weighed in on the hot topics of the educational system, globalization, and offshoring. CSPP issued a report on how the United States could remain competitive, but it is clearly just the first salvo in what will be a sustained lobbying campaign in Washington to try to encourage Congress to see these issues the way the CEOs do. READ MORE >

IBM Ends 2003 Upbeat, Sounds Optimistic About 2004
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

IBM moved up its announcement of financial results a few days to get ahead of the Martin Luther King holiday in the States and possibly to talk about sales on the same day as rival Sun Microsystems, which is still struggling. After fighting back any temptation for optimism for years, IBM's leaders allowed themselves a little optimism that an uptick in IT spending is under way. They stopped short of calling a turnaround--but just barely. READ MORE >

Intel to Remove Xeon's Advantages to Push Itanium
by Timothy Prickett Morgan

After nearly a decade of 64-bit processing in the RISC server market, it might be reasonable to accept that 64-bit computing for Intel X86 processors was a foregone conclusion. Since 1996, Intel has been making the case publicly for its 64-bit Itanium and its EPIC (explicitly parallel instruction computing) instruction set. It has not been an easy run for Intel, but the company has a plan to make Itanium take off: Remove the advantages that 32-bit Xeons have on Itaniums, and stress the advantages the Itanium architecture brings. READ MORE >

IBM Moves Fast on J2EE 1.4 Spec with WebSphere 6 Preview
by Alex Woodie

IBM recently issued a preview of its next WebSphere middleware release, which will support the latest Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Version 1.4 specs. The preview, called WebSphere Application Server Technology for Developers Version 6, was made available for download from IBM's developerWorks Web site on December 19, and it's the only J2EE Version 1.4-compliant Java application server besides the developer release Sun Microsystems made available in December. READ MORE >

As I See It: What Might Have Been
by Victor Rozek

When the value of your dollars is shrinking because of inflation, and your savings are shrinking because of recession, it is neither inappropriate nor self-indulgent to wonder what might have been. The problem is, it's hard to prove a negative. You know how much money you have, but it's harder to estimate how much you've lost over the years due to such things as bad fiscal policy, market manipulation, theft and fraud, or reckless deregulation, all of which invite larceny and price gouging. READ MORE >

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