The next large-scale military or terrorist attack on the United States, if and when it happens, may not involve airplanes or bombs or even intruders breaching American borders. Instead, such an assault may be carried out in cyberspace by shadowy hackers half a world away. And Internet security experts believe that it could be just as devastating to the U.S.’s economy and infrastructure as a deadly bombing.

Experts say last week’s attack on the former Soviet republic of Georgia, in which a Russian military offensive was preceded by an Internet assault that overwhelmed Georgian government Web sites, signals a new kind of cyberwar, one for which the United States is not fully prepared.

Hewlett-Packard has announced a line of portable lightweight computers aimed at business travelers to compete with a product range announced by rival Dell last week. HP said on Monday that the lineup included the EliteBook 2530p, which is the smallest and lightest of its computers with a weight of just more than 3 pounds and an extended battery life.

The company said its EliteBook 2730p is an ultra-thin computer that converts to a touch-screen, pen-based tablet computer with a twist of its screen and weighs 3.7 pounds. HP said it expected the HP EliteBook 2530p and HP EliteBook 2730p to become available by early September, with estimated prices of $1,499 and $1,670, respectively.

As technology stocks waned in the last few months of the 20th century, some analysts worried that technology degrees wouldn’t be as valuable as they had been during the "dot-com bubble." They couldn’t have been more wrong.

It’s not just industry heavyweights like Google and Apple who are acquiring new real estate to house all their new hires. Employers from nearly every market sector imaginable are luring professionals with computer training with competitive salaries, perks, and bonuses. With large companies taking their IT in-house and small businesses relying on outsourced providers, it seems that everyone in the world wants to hire technology professionals. According to government statistics, these 10 jobs show the most promise over the next decade.

The Learning Continuum Company (TLCC) has announced the availability of Sametime 8 user courses. These distance learning courses can be accessed via a Web browser or Notes client. Two courses are included, Using Sametime 8 Connect and Web Conferencing Using Sametime 8. A typical lesson includes both detailed procedures and a movie to highlight that particular topic. Activities follow each lesson to give the user the hands on experience required to fully understand the topic.

Both courses can be easily customized to fit your organization’s needs. An integrated discussion database allows students to easily get help from an instructor and quizzes/exams validate the user’s understanding of the course material.

What does it take to be a great IT leader? The best insights come from the CIOs who are out there doing it every day. In this episode of Sanity Savers for IT executives, see what CIOs have identified as the top leadership qualities needed to run an IT department.

Richard Pape, mainframe systems executive at IBM Asia-Pacific, told ZDNet Asia in an email interview that the company is witnessing a resurgence in the mainframe. "We saw a range of all-new mainframe clients this year across the world, particularly in emerging markets [such as China and India]," he said.

During the release of its second-quarter results last month, IBM reported a 32 percent year-on-year increase in revenue from the System z mainframe server products. There are several drivers for customers wanting or continuing to invest in mainframes, said Pape.

The two ISO and IEC technical boards have given the go-ahead to publish ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology–Office Open XML formats, as an ISO/IEC International Standard after appeals by four national standards bodies against the approval of the document failed to garner sufficient support.

None of the appeals from Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela received the support for further processing of two-thirds of the members of the ISO Technical Management Board and IEC Standardization Management Board, as required by ISO/IEC rules governing the work of their joint technical committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology.

Wizard Recovery Company announces the release of NTFS Recovery Wizard, a step-by-step data recovery solution for NTFS disks and partitions. NTFS Recovery Wizard makes it easy to undelete files, recover data and repair corrupted NTFS disks and volumes.

NTFS Recovery Wizard combines unprecedented ease of use with powerful data recovery capabilities. Fully automating the process of recovering files and entire NTFS partitions, NTFS Recovery Wizard is a full-scale recovery solution for the widest audiences of home and small office users.

First there was road rage, then there was air rage; now there is desk rage. Is desk rage truly the newest "workplace killer" or is this just a contrived story to fill out news hours in the dog days of summer? Not to make light of the real-life scary workplace headlines, but it seems that much of the advice on handling desk rage might at best be hard to apply, and at its worst entirely missing the mark.

Dr. Kerry Sulkowicz of the Boswell Group told NBC news that "rage can be avoided when workers can talk about what’s wrong in the office." Career Builder, via CNN.com, suggests that employees dealing with an enraged coworker apologize for anything they might have done to set him or her off. The next time you’re at work and something has gone down that you have decided is the last straw consider instead The IT Grind’s Three No-Nonsense Steps to Stepping Away From Your Desk Rage.

High rates of IT project failure persist because most organizations don’t understand the real reasons why their projects fail.

Executives often blame the project manager for planning or budgeting errors without recognizing their own contributions to failure. Don’t ignore the early warning signs of failure; they’re a loud siren if you listen carefully.

A research paper by two academics and a business consultant, Early Warning Signs of IT Project Failure: The Dominant Dozen, sheds light on the underlying causes behind many failures. The paper provides a framework for examining early-stage IT projects to identify and prevent downstream problems.