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Apparently there is no New Economy. During the height of the dotcom craze, venture capitalists invested billions, thousands of people gave up decent jobs in return for options and new magazines chronicling the craze sprung forth like pimples on a pre-teen.

No magazine captured the rise and fall quite like The Industry Standard. It came out of nowhere and soon set records for ad pages, despite a dozen or so competing titles. It was the toast of the town, by golly, and at times its pages reflected the arrogance that afflicted so many instant dotcom millionaires.

I was never clear on who The Industry Standard's target audience was -- or any of the other dotcom titles for that matter. Was it the VCs looking for ideas or the startups looking for dough? Tech heads looking for jobs or everyday dreamers living out a fantasy?

The Standard lived the life it covered, snagging $30 million in venture dollars -- and the pressures that go with them. And when the market went south, it went from an inch or so thick right down to pamphlet size. Apparently Morgan Stanley and Chase Capital didn't shell out $30 mil to produce a magazine you could pick your teeth with, and so a few weeks ago the plug was unceremoniously yanked.

During this craze I stayed with traditional IT-focused titles, wondering the whole time if I was missing something. It turns out I did miss something -- a pink slip! These days, traditional titles rule, and that's right where I plan to stay.

Scam Central

Recently I wrote about an e-mail offer made to me by a Nigerian, where I could help expatriate a few funds in return for a share of the loot. Now Jennifer Lamb has made me an offer I really can't refuse.

Jennifer has a simple favor to ask. Jennifer is married with children, two are her husband's and one is hers. Now she wants to work at home to give these munchkins proper attention. That is where I come in. I can help by buying four lotto tickets, do a simple search and click a link. Since Jennifer gets paid for each click, she'll soon be able to afford paper towels, some meat and vegetables and perhaps even a night on the town with her precious husband. And if thousands of dummkopfs take her up on it, she might make some real dough.

Happens Every Time

At Network Computing, our product tests are rigorous. We don't just look at the docs, install the product in some makeshift lab and fire off a few commands. We put these tools onto real networks and literally beat them into submission. The disciplined nature of these tests means we have to freeze our environment at some point and collect the results, otherwise the review would never be published. So oftentimes a company releases a new rev that addresses the shortcomings our review exposed. The latest example of this phenomenon applies to our Intrusion Detection System cover story in which we reviewed Computer Associates' eTrust.

Computer Associates believes that its eTrust Intrusion Detection Version 1.5 corrects problems we found in 1.4. We haven't tested 1.5, and perhaps we will do a Sneak Preview on it, but here's what CA has to say about its latest update. The new version can be continually updated via a subscription service. It boasts an Enterprise Management Console that helps build rules sets remotely, then sends them out to all eTrust installations. The version also has a two-tier architecture, allowing users to connect separate IDS engines together via a remote PC. Finally it can detect unwanted traffic using packet-based rules, in addition to pattern-based rules and statistics-based rules.

Who'd a Thunk?

Over the years, Novell has been down more than an elephant's trunk. Reading the press and listening to the pundits, you would have expected the company to have folded up its tent years ago. Of course the same thing has been happening to Borland for over a decade, and like Novell, it is still kicking. Novell is not only still in business, but actually expects to break even next quarter, after a minor loss this quarter. That beats Wall Street forecasts, which had given the company up for dead after forcing its stock down some 90 percent over the last 18 months.

It's Re-Reorg Time, Again

First, Computer Associates reorganized into four groups covering six areas of technology (quite a feat for a company with over 1,200 products). Now Cisco has gone one step further, reorganizing into 11 technology groups. Take that, Charles Wang! Instead of three market-focused divisions (commercial, service provider and enterprise), Cisco will be structured around 11 different areas of technology, which are -- deep breath -- Access, Aggregation, Cisco IOS, Internet Switching and Services, Ethernet Access (as opposed to just Access), Network Management Services, Core Routing, Optical, Storage, Voice, and Wireless. I expect reorgs to accelerate as the economy continues to stagnate.