Articles by Gene J. Koprowski

Is outsourcing still dragging down salaries of key IT talent in the U.S.? Not anymore, according to a new survey by Foote Partners, an IT consultancy based in New Canaan, Conn. According to the report, such adverse effects of outsourcing -- made an issue in last year's losing presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) -- are beginning to taper off...

Online auctioneer eBay this week strengthened rules to prevent fraud on its site, as cases continue to emerge of disreputable sellers misrepresenting the products they market there One allegedly fraudulent eBay merchant was sued this week by the Missouri Attorney General, Jay Nixon, after an individual, Michael D. Pickens, allegedly sold burned clo...

Venture capital investment for the Internet could be poised to return to a healthy volume not seen since the late 1990s and earlier this decade In a sign of renewed confidence in the prospects of the consumer Internet, the founders of PayPal, based in San Francisco, and a number of other successful Internet start-ups, last week launched a new inve...

The federal government is moving forward with a proposal to tap -- and track -- in-flight Internet communications, experts tell TechNewsWorld The Federal Bureau of Investigation, teaming with the Department of Homeland Security, is petitioning the Federal Communications Commission, an independent agency, to change the rules so that law enforcement ...

An array of state legislatures are moving forward with measures this year to regulate automobile event data recorders -- the so-called "black boxes" that monitor vehicle speed, seat belt use and other safety data, according to experts According to a report by Pam Greenberg, an analyst with the legislative information services bureau of the National...

Should bloggers receive federal legal protection so they can shield sources from overzealous prosecutors? Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), believe so. But others in the Congressional leadership with more influence aren't so sure Two pieces of legislation, S 340 and HR 581, are moving through Congress, fueled by the cas...

Federal rules crafted to curtail "adult entertainment" sites will not be enforced against sites involved in litigation against the government until after Labor Day, according to a temporary agreement reached by the U.S. Department of Justice and Web site producers The proposed regulations, amendments to the 18 US Code 2257, are being stayed until S...

Convicted computer criminals are getting drastically different sentences, depending upon the jurisdiction in which they are tried, with one notorious hacker netting a very light suspended sentence, experts tell TechNewsWorld A judge in Germany today handed down a suspended sentence of a year and nine months to Sven Jaschan, the creator of the malic...

The battle over the nominee to replace retiring U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is already roaring -- on the Internet An array of sites -- from the left and the right -- have already sprouted online, touting the views of their sponsors, and claiming that the nomination is the most important court appointment in American history, one ...

The adoption of service-oriented architecture (SOA) is accelerating, as collaborative efforts like the Celtix Project gain momentum, experts said Dublin, Ireland-based Iona Technologies last month disclosed that it is planning to contribute proprietary technologies for Celtix, a Java-based open-source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) project, focusing ...

Software engineers at Microsoft's laboratory in Cambridge, England, have developed a new, proprietary peer-to-peer (P2P) technology that is being eyed by Hollywood producers as a potential distribution channel for their content Code-named "Avalanche," the product is said by Microsoft to be a safer alternative to BitTorrent, another P2P tool, as it ...

The monitoring and management of open-source software is becoming a significant market opportunity as users seek ways to mitigate risk and developers pursue revenue streams for their "free" software offerings, experts said A 2004 Forrester Research survey of 140 large North American companies revealed that 46 percent are currently using open-source...

Matt Drudge may be the world's most famous blogger, having outed former President Clinton and his pudgy paramour Monica Lewinsky online. His successors on the Internet made blogging a political force during last year's presidential election, and may have helped George W. Bush retain the White House for the Republicans But business blogs -- not poli...

The controversy over P2P -- or peer-to-peer network -- file-sharing continues as the technology and entertainment industries are this week eying the U.S. Supreme Court for a pivotal decision that could determine the future of music on the Internet The ruling on MGM v. Grokster, which could be announced in the coming days, tackles the problem of ill...

Producers at film studio Dreamworks relied on HP ProLiant servers, using the AMD Opteron processor, when making the new hit movie "Madagascar." The story concerns animals from a New York City zoo who are resettled to Africa, where they have a hard time coping with life in the wild. "HP helps animators add effects in real-time and render images faster than ever before," said James Mouton, vice president, platforms, ProLiant servers at Hewlett-Packard...

Microsoft is edging closer to a release of its long-awaited new operating system -- code-named Longhorn -- with the debut of two technologies expected to be included in the OS, and the announcement of a new suite of applications for next year, Microsoft Office 12.0 "Those areas where Office has gotten richer will be in the next big release, which i...

Partitioning of servers in the data centers of its top customers is putting pressure on Oracle, which is making a number of moves to cope with the trend, experts say Earlier this month, Oracle changed its licensing terms for users of Sun Microsystems' Solaris 10.0 operating system, lowering the price for customers who only use Oracle software on pa...

Are federal computers more secure today than they were in 2002 when the Congress passed the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA)? That depends. Some agencies are in various stages of compliance, while others are not as far along "The task is brutally difficult, at best," said Yvonne Donaldson, a spokeswoman at BindView, a federal IT ...

A number of companies -- start-ups and established firms alike -- are eying the organic RFID tags market. Venture capital firms, like ITU Ventures, are placing seed investment bets on developers with patented prototypes. But despite the hype, the goal of a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag that costs a penny or less is as elusive as ever, experts said...

Marketers have always wanted to track their customers' every move. Now, new scanning technologies linked to the Internet, may enable them to do so. Earlier this month ratings service Arbitron, Inc. and advertising specialty producer VNU disclosed that they have agreed to deploy during the next nine months a pilot project to collect multi-media purchase data from consumers...