Thieves took sensitive personal information on 26.5 million U.S. veterans, including Social Security numbers and birth dates, after a Veterans Affairs employee improperly brought the material home, the government said Monday. The information involved mainly those veterans who served and have been discharged since 1975, said VA Secretary Jim Nicholson. Data of veterans discharged before 1975 who submitted claims to the agency may have been included. Nicholson said there was no evidence the thieves had used the data for identity theft, and an investigation was continuing.

An unprecedented string of electronic intrusions has prompted Ohio University to place at least one technician on paid administrative leave and begin a sweeping reorganization of the university’s computer services department. Bill Sams, Ohio University’s chief information officer, said he initiated the reorganization on Friday. The Athens, Ohio-based university is reacting to recent discoveries that data thieves compromised at least three campus computer servers. In a disclosure that hasn’t been widely reported, one of the compromised servers, which held Social Security numbers belonging to 137,000 people, was penetrated by U.S. and overseas-based hackers for at least a year and possibly much longer.

Corporate email has become an important source of evidence in many of today’s high-profile court cases. As email takes on an increasingly critical role in corporate litigation, IT shops need to be prepared with an archiving plan should they be called upon by a judge to produce a single email or a series of electronic messages. Email archiving is still a relatively new idea that has been slow to take off, despite the recent attention it has received during the Enron trial and other highly publicized legal proceedings where corporate email has been central to the case. IT managers assigned the responsibility of developing an email-archiving strategy will be happy to know that there are options available to accommodate companies with varying budgets and wide-ranging security requirements.

IBM announced it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Rembo Technology, a privately held software company based in Geneva, Switzerland. Financial details were not disclosed. The acquisition is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2006. Rembo is a leading provider of software that helps organizations automatically install or upgrade operating systems on thousands of servers, laptops and desktop computers simultaneously, which eliminates the need for IT specialists to spend days or weeks installing software manually on each physical or virtualized computer.

A series of Web attacks by spammers have forced a security firm to end an initiative to curb junk mail. Israeli start-up Blue Security used a variety of tactics to make spammers clean up the lists of addresses to which they sent junk mail. The firm also automatically filled in forms on spammers’ Web sites to get names taken off the mailing lists. But escalating attacks from spammers annoyed by the initiative’s success has led to its closure.

For some, the Internet it has become an addiction, adversely affecting their lives and their family’s lives. While not yet defined as a true addiction, many people are suffering the consequences of obsession with the online world, warns Dr. Diane M. Wieland, who treats patients with computer addiction in her practice in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. For some people, the Internet may promote addictive behaviors and pseudo-intimate interpersonal relationships, reports Wieland.

The World Wide Web is on the cusp of making its next big leap to become an open environment for collaboration, and its inventor said he has not been so optimistic in years. Still, Tim Berners-Lee, the Briton who invented and then gave away the World Wide Web, warns that Internet crime and anti-competitive behavior must be fought tooth and nail.

Everyone is talking about work-life balance, throwing about catch phrases such as "work to live–don’t live to work" and "escape the rat race." Yet beyond the inspirational mantra comes the reality of IT infrastructure and services that demand 24/7 attention. The pressure of this service level is leading many workers to wonder if they have any hope in balancing their lives. The wish for decompression time, or at least greater flexibility of work schedules, is growing. According to a compensation and benefits report by the Toronto-based Hudson Highland Group, released May 17, one in three workers wanted flex schedules as part of their overall compensation. Twenty-two percent said, given the choice, they would choose additional family benefits, including parental leaves and personal days, over job training or supplemental insurance.

What happens when Phil writes an agent? Fifteen minutes later, he’s used up several gigabytes of server space, Nancy Hand is on her way to the office at 4:00am, and Phil’s no longer allowed to write agents. What did he do? Read the article to find out.

Read this DominoPower article.

Dell has agreed to use Advanced Micro Devices’ Opteron chip in multiprocessor servers by the end of the year, ending a long-standing policy of sticking exclusively with Intel. The PC maker made the move public in its first-quarter earnings press release on Thursday. Speculation has mounted for years as to whether Dell would adopt the company’s chips, despite Dell’s exclusive relationship with rival Intel to this point. AMD has enjoyed a performance lead in server benchmarks over Intel’s Xeon processors.