Opinion

Golden Gobblers 2011: The biggest birdbrains in tech

Who are the tech turkeys of the year? Cringely has the answers — and they're more fowl than you can imagine

Stop using these 25 passwords today

Organizations need to steer users away from common, weak passwords, including such standbys as '123456' and seemingly random names

What I’m thankful for as a developer

Neil McAllister counts his turkeys, in this pre-Thanksgiving edition of Fatal Exception

Off with their heads! Mobile Edge’s 2011 Turkey Awards

In a year of amazing innovation and adoption of mobile tech, there were also some amazing duds and boneheaded moves

What I’m thankful for as a developer

Coders weather the long, hard winters of software projects thanks to the rich bounty of modern developer tools

Shocker: AT&T finally improves its 3G network

The battle between Verizon and AT&T is bearing fruit in the form of faster cellular download speeds

Science has spoken: Sarcasm makes you smarter

Let us now praise sarcastic men (and women)! Cringely nominates yours truly for the honors

Barnes & Noble takes on Microsoft’s Android patents

Barnes & Noble strikes back in legal filing with 46 pages of examples attacking Microsoft's Android patents as trivial and insignificant

Picking the top 10: Technologies vs. trends

Which of today's emerging technologies will redefine tomorow's enterprise?

Let’s keep the board of directors in the loop

We in IT have thought very little about what boards of directors know about IT, what they should know about IT, and what they should do about IT

Troubleshoot your data center from the easy chair

Remote management is the key to maintaining your sanity when the bits hit the fan

VDI: Not just for big business

Though VDI is most often associated with large deployments, small business has a lot to gain as well

Picking the top 10: Technologies vs. trends

No one can tell for sure which emerging technologies will have the greatest impact on the enterprise, but we're giving it our best shot

As cellphones get smarter, are smartphones overkill?

The lines are blurring, but the long-term trend seems to favor the smartphone

Windows 8 bootkit doesn’t really defeat ‘secure boot’

Stoned Lite bootkit exploits old BIOS firmware, which Microsoft has dumped for UEFI in Windows 8

Dear Congress: Don’t mess with our DNS

The Stop Online Piracy Act may block most of the Net for U.S. netizens and cause other unintended ugly consequences. Don't we have enough brain-dead laws on the books?

Update: U.S. water plants reportedly hit by cyber attacks

In separate incidents, hackers allegedly caused a water pump failure at an Illinois utility and showed off purported access to water supply systems for a Texas city

Stanford posts six free online iPhone app dev courses

iOS 5 version of online course covers nuts and bolts of building an iPhone/iPad program and getting it distributed through the App Store

Leaked email reveals Microsoft Security Essentials beta program

If you'd like to test the next version of Microsoft Security Essentials, sign up now — in case Microsoft withdraws the offer

Thinking of a Chromebook for Christmas? Wait until 2016

Google's foray into a cloud computer is stillborn, with paltry sales and still no offline version of Google Docs

Why devops is no silver bullet for developers

You can't automate what you can't standardize, so devops can't address a key developer frustration

Coming conundrum: Malware signed by a legitimate developer

Cyber criminals are stealing code-signing certificates, allowing their malware to get by some defenses

Will Quest’s acquisition of VKernel shrink virtualization management ecosystem?

Quest Software must decide if it will merge app performance management products or choose between vOperations Suite and vFoglight

The futility of developer productivity metrics

Code analysis and similar metrics provide little insight into what really makes an effective software development team

OpenStack a year later: Popular but still bare bones

Seen as the cloud's Linux, the open source cloud infrastructure effort has picked up support from a lot of big companies

Why the big carriers won’t build out their networks

Congestion on the Web means more profits for providers — and less bandwidth and higher prices for us

Android draws closer to military readiness

Android's flexibility and forthcoming military-grade compliance could offset its relative app insecurity

Microsoft’s ‘secret’ social network not so secret any more

Redmond seems to be cooking up a social network/search hybrid after all. Welcome to its Google+ killer, social — er, socal — no, Socl

Cloud app dev goes private

The new focus on private PaaS suffers from the normal cloud computing hype — but there could be something there

Meet the new bugs, same as the old bugs

At one company, managerial inefficiency leads to the same coding issues popping up repeatedly, with no relief in sight

How to migrate file shares to SharePoint 2010

Thousands of files and folders can’t just be cut and pasted into SharePoint; you need a plan and a tool to make it happen

13 tips for turbocharging projects

Today's rapidly changing business environment requires a faster, stronger, more flexible approach to project management

Flash is going down for the count — but slowly

Developers will have new HTML5 world to deal with when the smoke clears

ISPs could have stopped massive click-fraud operation

In the wake of the massive DNSChanger click-fraud scam, security experts call on ISPs to do more

Flash is going down for the count — but slowly

Developers will have new HTML5 world to deal with when the smoke clears

InfoWorld interview: Why Google Dart beats JavaScript

Is Dart a JavaScript killer?

BlackBerry reboot: What’s in, what’s out, and who should keep the faith

Google: Bringing you the future today

At the secret Google X lab, the search giant is funding research into robots, driverless cars, and smart dinnerware. Cringe has ideas for other projects for the Googlers

Blogosphere launches virtual ‘Occupy VMware’ campaign

Developers and testers are demanding a Microsoft MSDN- or TechNet-style software subscription for VMware's growing library

4 incredibly useful steps to better backups

Love backups? Didn't think so. To make the process less painful, consider the following steps when creating or changing backup environment

Free Android antivirus software is ‘useless,’ says testing firm

The malware scanners from minor players typically catch less than 10 percent of malicious software

The privacy gods must be crazy

Thanks to two separate government moves, Facebook may become more private; Twitter, much less so

Google grabs search share from Microsoft

Apple could mount a mobile search challenge that gains traction on the desktop — without spending 1 percent of what Microsoft has thrown at Bing

Want a job? This site reveals if you have a chance

Fueled by big-time Silicon Valley money, new startup Identified rates your employability based on your Facebook info

Instant mobile networking: Smartphones get smarter

Mobile devices packed with NFC, Wi-Fi Direct, and Bluetooth hint at what's coming in ad hoc communications

As cyber crimes go international, so must enforcement agencies

FBI, Estonian and Dutch police, NASA, and more bust major click fraud plot — and offer blueprint for future investigations

Why Apple can’t keep the iPhone 4S on the shelves

Users in this age of personal IT know quality tech and are too smart to fall for bull from vendors or the press

Will Adobe’s HTML5 strategy really help developers?

With Flash's last stand, Adobe needs to quickly secure its place in the Web developer tools market — but signs are it won't

5 key trends in cloud computing’s future

As we gain experience with the cloud, expect to see centralized trust systems, amazingly large databases, and more

Sloppy use of Amazon cloud can expose users to hacking

New research exposes the potential for vulnerabilities from the non-secure use of virtual images in the public cloud