Reuters reveals that “[a] Norway consumer agency said it aims to take computer group Apple to court over what it calls unfair barriers to playing music from the iTunes music store on devices other than Apple’s iPod. Consumer Ombudsman Bjoern Erik Thon told Reuters he hoped other countries would follow the Norwegian example and file their own cases against the U.S. computer giant. Thon said on Tuesday that iTunes — Apple’s online store for music downloads — had not met its demands to change its digital rights management (DRM) system to make its music available for all music players. ‘I want them to make their services interoperable so that you can play music bought on iTunes on other devices, including mobile phones,’ Thon told Reuters in a telephone interview.”
The Mercury News writes that “[i]If you are a woman, a technical career can be bad for your health, tough on your ego and devastating to a desire to raise a family, according to new research from the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology and Stanford University. The study, which sought to determine why there are so few high-ranking female engineering managers, found women face the greatest barriers to advancement when they are in mid-career. Andrea Davies Henderson, one of the authors of the study and research director for the Michelle Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford, said high-tech companies are attracting college graduates — women made up 34 percent of the technical workforce surveyed by the study — but they are not keeping them or promoting them to senior positions.”
The Mercury News also has an interesting – but slightly depressing – article on the disappearing market for venture-backed IPOs.
On a more positive note, Internetnews.com has an article explaining why “there’s hope for the IT industry.” (The article says that system integrators and consultants will get a boost from the crisis in the financial sector as institutions that have taken over or bought others seek to align their back end systems.)
Slashdot warns of “a newly discovered and deadly denial-of-service attack that could well be the next big threat to the Internet as a whole.”