American IT folks who have lost their jobs...

I ran across an interesting job posting that I know should infuriate you. It is posted on dice.com here.

I wonder if someone will be making a call to the feds or something even more drastic...

Random Thoughts for 2009-01-11

The number of IT conferences next year will be on the decline with some of them executing last minute cancellations when they see that registrations are at an all-time low. Now is the time for conferences to reinvent themselves where they don't use the same tired approaches. I am curious though why anyone hasn't blogged on this trend?

News of doom related to Satyam is all over the newspapers. I wonder if the CEOs of Infosys and others have been telling the whole truth. I know that I own a few shares of Cognizant and am worried that ethics in India are on the decline.

Why do people outsource when they can open source? For example, if there are 250 P&C insurance companies in the US in which each may have their own claims administration system, why do they outsource individually to India instead of open sourcing the systems that are expensive but otherwise don't provide competitive advantage? Is it the lack of vision within the enterprise architecture crowd?

Ever think about how Gartner and other analyst firms do a disservice to their customers? Consider the need to be PCI compliant where you can purchase tools in the static analysis space such as Ounce Labs, Coverity, etc for a lot cheaper than you can purchase a web application firewall. Analysts need to become more solution-oriented and stop focusing just on products.

Have you ever thought about the the architecture of facebook? The ability to add in applications in a loosely-coupled way is something that enterprises should be demanding of their portal vendors. Wouldn't it be cool if JSR-168 and other equivalents were as straightforward as adding an application to facebook?

Random Thoughts for 2009-01-10

• 
  I have committed to doing a presentation in April to the Hartford Ruby users group on security. I sure hope that I am not asked to explain why Ruby isn't enterprise ready.
• A coworker of mines will be returning back to India and has agreed to help me with some charitable work. I will be sponsoring lunch for a couple of orphanages in the Bangalore area. Be on the lookout for upcoming blog entries to contain photos of kids in India with a finely dressed horned animal in the background holding the OWASP logo
• I have been spending some time on facebook lately. It is fascinating to connect up with folks from high school that you haven't seen in twenty years. Some of my female classmates have aged really well. I wonder if I knew back then what they would look like now, how my actions would have changed.
• Only a couple more days before there is no more Bushitler and his republican form of leadershit. I wonder what my last blog entry will be for my Stop the Bushitler blog.
• It's 2009 and the economy is on the decline. Ever wonder why analysts haven't commented on how enterprise customers are scaling back their spend in terms of analyst research or more importantly how analysts can remain relevant in a declining economy.
• One of my new years resolutions is to re-double my efforts in creating my own foreign policy. For me, this translates into increased microfinance loans on Kiva. 
• Speaking at conferences will be especially challenging this year in that I am on my own for figuring out how to get to places. This of course means that I can speak at lots of events in Boston or New York but otherwise would be dependent on the conferences themselves covering travel expenses.
• Anyone else ever wonder why OpenID isn't being used in enterprise settings?
• Now that the airlines have cut rates, I hope to travel to St. Croix this year to visit family. Of course, I will be visiting Trinidad as well. If oil drops even further, I may visit some of the other islands in the Caribbean
• I wonder how many folks who are CISSP holders are even aware of OWASP as an organization?
• I have been hearing some good things regarding Cognizant and there strategy around secure coding. They feel like they have a better handle on meeting the customer need in this regard when compared to Satyam, Wipro or Infosys.