Stories about: Rio

If there's one thing the digital revolution has taught us, it's that we shouldn't get too attached to anything. Technology has a way of seizing long-held ideas and entrenched industries and turning them upside-down.

In the second part of Computerworld's analysis of the Office Open XML debate, platform strategy manager for Microsoft, Sarah Bond, and several Microsoft gold partners offer their views on why the OOXML format should become an internationally approved standard.

We at Computerworld would be the last to say that science and technology aren't creative pursuits. Still, when most people say, "Oh, she's very creative," they're probably not talking about the subject's ability to perform higher math or engineer a network. Such people might be amazed to learn of the remarkable number of actors, directors, musicians and other celebrities who nurture an inner geek.

Lawrence Lessig, who serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge, talks about Internet censorship and predicts a great battle among the defenders of free software and Microsoft -- and says it will probably be "long and bloody."

Open source virtualization specialist XenSource has updated XenEnterprise, its enterprise-level hypervisor, aiming to cement its position as the main alternative to market leader VMware.

Bolstered by the US$4.2 billion it raised in a second stock offering in September 2005, Google has been on a hiring spree and is still looking to fill more than 1,000 positions. But for some software developers and other IT workers, Google's arduous and secretive hiring process has started outweighing the glamour and perks it offers. And now, the search engine vendor says that it is taking steps to simplify and shorten its hiring procedures.