The Bloor Perspective: Work work work, OS attacks and the secret of Google's success

Everyone knows that the best indicator of a hardworking member of staff is to be found in the number of hours that they spend in the office. Well, on this metric British workers lead the way in Europe. With scant regard for contracts and personal well being, Brits spend more hours toiling at their desks than any of our European brethren. The question that every manager should be asking is whether the time spent at work at the desk is a good measurement of productivity?

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) and the Industrial Society have launched a new campaign to improve people's working lives. The campaign seeks to promote a better work/social life balance for workers, which if the quoted statistics are correct, many UK staff desperately need.

Several surveys have indicated that British workers toil on average for more than 43 hours a week while Germans manage just over 40. This one statistic provides the first evidence that time alone does not guarantee success. For all of the many issues that face the German economy at the moment, Germany has been held to be a model of industrial effectiveness and efficiency for the majority of the last 20 years.

The TUC and Industrial society believe that the culture of long hours worked in the UK is not good for business, people or society as a whole. Along with the obvious harm that working long hours brings to the individual, the campaign members believe that social stability is undermined and that business itself gains little, if anything, in terms of productivity.

When it comes to long hours, the IT profession almost prides itself on a tradition of work late, stay late, and be seen to stay late. Every IT professional needs to look at what he or she does and how he or she does it. Hard times dictate that everyone must be effective - no matter how little time it takes. The days of never mind the quality, feel the width are gone. Quality is paramount. Effectiveness is required.

*A safe platform*

Internet company Alldas.de compiles statistics on website defacements, the results of which can be found at http://defaced.alldas.de/. The statistics they have gathered on operating systems defaced since April 2000 makes interesting reading. With a nearly 68 per cent share Windows tops the chart as the most defaced platform. Linux comes in second with over 16 per cent, "unknown" platforms take third spot with just over nine percent and Solaris takes fourth place with a little over three and a quarter percent.

These statistics can be interpreted in many ways and it would be easy to jump straight in and point out how badly Microsoft's operating systems fare. It is clear that they form the defacement platform of choice, but there are an awful lot of Windows servers on the internet. The statistics may also reflect that defacers produce tools that favour Windows, perhaps because that is the platform with which they are most familiar. Equally, the managers of Windows systems may have less time to look after their systems or less experience in securing them.

However, what is obvious is that Windows is the most defaced platform around and Microsoft needs to address the vulnerabilities urgently. However, Linux vendors and users can see that they are in no position to relax and the same can be said for Solaris as well. Looking down through the list, nearly every operating system appears on the list at least once.

The picture is clear and it reinforces the security message. No system is totally safe from attack. Systems need to be actively managed and security must be a prime consideration, every day.

The point is that no one can afford to relax when it comes to security whatever platform they utilise. Are you feeling safe?

*Going Google*

In only three years, Google has grown from a modest 10,000 searches a day to its current 70 million, which amounts to a phenomenal 25 billion searches annually.

Google works a bit differently from other search engines. Instead of simple, free text-based keywords - which has been what most searchers have cut their teeth on - the Google engine collects web pages based on a hierarchy of linkages. It then builds representations of these pages, which allow the searches to quickly find the words.

Monica Henzinger, Google's director of research, estimates they have more than 1.3 billion in their index which is updated every 28 days. Also, Google looks at the distribution of keywords in a document and their relationship to other words on the page. How inferences are made about a query's meaning is the key and is based on the mathematics that drives Google itself.

In the end, Google works. Basically, this means that a searcher has a greater chance of finding the answer to their question more quickly than with other searches. In other words, more relevant and more precise search results.

There is, however, another differentiator between Google and its competitors. Google is making money. A new chief executive has been appointed who it is assumed will lead Google into the realms of 'really big business'. The company is currently still privately held but is estimated by Wall Street analysts at a value of about £175m.

Last month Google outlined plans to go public and its appointment of Eric Schmidt as the new CEO adds fuel to the forecasts of increasing commercialisation. Schmidt, at 46, is considered a venerable 'grey-hair' in the IT world and his appointment follows the lead of Inktomi and Altavista prior to their entries into the enterprise market.

In these days of dot-com nuclear winter, Google's workplace is enough to make you sigh. Behind the love-bead curtain in the women's locker room is a sauna and the lobby is decorated with lava lamps and a piano. Free gourmet lunches are eaten in the café (definitely not called a cafeteria) and the head chef used to cook for the Grateful Dead. Among Jerry Garcia's many attributes, anorexia was never one (so we're told). Onsite masseuses are also available.

As Google moves into the arena with the big boys, we wish it well. Go go, Google!