Opinion

Corrections to “Back to the Mac”

I made a couple of statements in my recent "Ahead of the Curve" blog that Apple contacted me to correct. First, contrary to my claim that the iPhone SDK is the first time that Apple has released a public preview editions of Xcode in the pa

Vizioncore’s public beta of vReplicator 2.5 available

Back in September of 2007, Vizioncore announced the release of vReplicator 2.1, the company's replication tool for virtual environments. That version added a more simplified disaster recovery process, easier failover testing, and improved replic

Should We Continue to Invest in Enterprise Architecture?

It's an old argument for me. I mean, why toss good money after bad, if indeed you're not getting the results. Truth-be-told most enterprises are not spending that much on enterprise architecture. Indeed, for most of the Global 2000 there is

Work and play?

Are remote DBAs a good idea?

I got an email from a marketing rep a while back telling me about this company that does remote DBA work and wanted to know if I was interested in doing a story on them. Well, normally I turn stuff like that down flat because I've seen those com

Our security is secretly secure

I make no bones about being a bigot when it comes to routing gear. I like the company that has the bridge on the box. I also manage the world wide WAN resources of a little company that had a few billion dollars in sales last year. Even converted to

The place for real-world Windows performance data

Welcome to the Windows Sentinel blog. Here, you'll learn all about real-world Windows performance based on analysis of data and trends extracted from the exo.repository of Windows performance data. That repository contains aggregated data on mor

Solving the legacy Windows compatibility puzzle

There's been a lot of chatter lately about how Microsoft needs to start over with Windows. Many point to the (NT) code base's 16-year history and how the need to maintain backward compatibility is hampering efforts to move the platform forw

Salesforce and Google ally — for now

Hamlet: Act I, Scene V         Ghost     Ay, that incestuous, that adulterate beast,     With witchcraft o

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Adventures in lightweight Internet app development

Follow InfoWorld's first steps in lightweight app development for emerging mobile devices and desktop widgets

Sound and Fury for Dell

<P>As long as we're on the subject of soundcards, another reader recently had an issue over a Sound Blaster board. But his problem wasn't with Creative – it was in trying to get Dell to send him the $99 card that he'd paid for ra

Why I’m okay that Google Code doesn’t support AGPL

Following threads from the Clipperz blog, I read this exchange of messages between Chris DiBona &amp; Greg Stein of Google and a group of folks that want Google to host AGPL'd projects on Google Code. (I'd urge you to read the thread as

Patrick O’Keefe on managing online forums

One of the most important elements of open source is building a great community. Some projects get momentum and some don't and a lot of it has to do with how well you manage online forums. There's a great book on this subject by Patrick O&#

Old but frustrating problems all too easy to forget under Windows

As Windows ages and evolves, it's sometimes too easy to forget those little gotchas that creep up and become the bane of sysadmins. My scenario is working on the Interop iLabs (technology demonstration areas) on Unified Communication. I'm r

Is Windows finished?

In my inbox last week, I got a newsletter that splashed the demise of Windows. And while that may be a pleasing thought to some, it just isn't practical. For instance, my friends at Oracle are always moaning that they're forced to use Windo

Windows is falling — run for your lives!

That creaking sound, the dust, that feeling of vague but imminent doom? It's not an earthquake. Your office isn't falling into a sink hole. It's the warning signs of Windows collapsing. According to a presentation served up last week b

ComCastastrophe Resolved

A few months ago, I wrote about a ComCast Business circuit that had yet to be installed, despite the fact that the contract had been signed and initial fees paid six months prior. It was a sad tale, and one without resolution — until Friday. Yes, on

How you know if your IT department is doing it right

This one's easy. A good IT department is generally kinda bored. When the infrastructure has been designed and built correctly and the telemetry is just right, IT doesn't have much to do except keep an eye on things and work on new projects.

How to handle illegal questions in a job interview

Dear Bob …Your recent column regarding the Canadian woman who got pregnant while unexpectedly starting a new job search got me to wondering — what are you supposed to do if an employer asks you an illegal question when they're interviewing yo

Creative corner-cutting

People who feel passionate about what they do always have the potential to become anti-heroes. If the process for completing a project is broken, then that process should be fixed. But if the process won't budge, or there's no time…

New Rhapsody version interesting for embedded software and systems

Last week I took advantage of the fact that Telelogic has a facility here in Andover to get an in-person preview demonstration of Rhapsody 7.2, the new version of their model-driven development product, which is being announced today. I should actual

Cross-generational Windows/Office preformance: About OfficeBench

Designed from the beginning to be a "run anywhere" benchmark, OfficeBench uses OLE automation and a variety of Office tasks to assess system performance

Skytap reveals cloud-based services as it enters virtual lab market

Skytap had a busy week – it emerged out of stealth mode, changed its name from illumita (going from a some what confusing name to a name that better reflects the company's vision), and at the same time revealed the limited availability of its fi

Is IBM or Cisco really interested in buying Citrix?

Has virtualization technology finally come into its own? IT shops around the world are flocking to the technology in the hopes that they aren't too late to the party. And the financial sector has also been taking a much larger interest in the te

Copying audio CDs on Windows Vista for x64

As I blogged last June, I have a Compaq Presario V6305NR laptop, on which I upgraded the operating system from the pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows Vista Ultimate for x64 for testing purposes, using my MSDN subscription. I still ne

Does gender matter?

Dear Bob …I'm a female manager. I think I'm pretty good at what I do, and throughout my career I have produced tangible results that back this up.My problem is, I'm not "one of the boys," and don't want to be one of th

The lowdown on two conferences I didn’t need to visit to know their conclusions

I did not attend IBM Impact, nor did I attend the recent Gartner Conference (proof: I can't find the URL). Also, I've not read other blogs reporting on those conferences. However, I bet I can figure out the core trends and messages at each.

WOA

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A security note about ftp and CushyCMS

In my first look at CushyCMS on Monday, I mentioned that &quot;personal site already had ftp access set up the way CushyCMS expected to see it.&quot; This raises an issue that I chose to skip in the interest of brevity. A reader with a Web-ba

Geek Week: Sequoia gets felled, digital census quelled

When you least expect it, you're elected. Sequoia Voting Systems may believe that shipping its source code off to some good ol' boy in Texas is all the independent testing they require, but a New Jersey judge thinks different. She's is

Getting Creative with crippleware

<P>If you discovered a device driver was malfunctioning and published a fix, you might assume the manufacturer of the product would be grateful. In very public fashion though, Creative Labs in the last few weeks has made it loud and clear that

Calcs, iCalcs and Chml: Integrity Control in Windows

Last week, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, I enjoyed the privilege of both attending and speaking at the TechMentor Conference, which focuses on the systems administrator or IT manager seeking real-world, in-depth technical training. While at

The return of Made in America

If you feed an educated, socially connected populace a steady diet of war, dirty politics, greedy CEOs, job losses, zero wage growth, ecological mayhem, $3 per gallon gasoline, homeless homeowners, and whining predatory investors, you get about what

Ixia opens their iSim-City for business

Opened on February 26, 2008, Ixia's iSim-City is a beautifully implemented facility that combines an executive briefing center with a large-scale proof-of-concept lab that can be used alone or with professional services. Located in Santa Clara,

Ubuntu: More doomed than ever…

UPDATE: I just tried a clean install of the Ubuntu 8.04 RC build. Setup completed, the system rebooted and I logged into the desktop. I then clicked the Power button in the upper right corner and chose Suspend from the list of options. Went to resume

OSGR: Open Source Goat Rodeo

Matt Asay has been telling me for years about his great pie-making abilities. And he's talked about inviting folks out to ski in Utah for a long time. Well, it all came together for two days this past week with the first ever Open Source Goat Ro

Battle brewing in the cloud

Amazon, better known for peddling books and CDs than selling leading-edge technology, surprised much of the tech world by rolling out, and actually attracting customers to, its version of cloud computing. Sure, there's still plenty of reason to

6 valuable green IT resources

Embarking down the sustainable IT path can be pretty daunting. You may very well appreciate, in a general sense, the potential benefits you can reap from green IT, including lower costs and a better environmental track record. Fortunately, there are

Symantec finally acquires AppStream to complete the virtualization package

Today during the keynote address at Symantec ManageFusion 2008 in Las Vegas, Symantec announced that they were finally completing their application virtualization package with the acquisition of AppStream. You might remember, it was a year ago at Man

Wait-listed for Google App Engine

I made a teensy-weensy mistake when I started to look at Google App Engine: I downloaded and installed the SDK and read through the Getting Started Guide fairly thoroughly before signing up for an account. As a result, I've been wait-listed. I t

Scattered Data

I know someone right now who is splitting a database into separate instances for performance purposes. Now, this happens to be a SQL Server specific installation, but the concept holds true for all the vendors. The problem is they're putting the

Preview: Sun’s two-way eight-way

Sun's newest UltraSPARC CPU goes multi-socket in the SPARC Enterprise T5240 server Ever since Sun introduced the eight-core Niagara CPU a few years ago, the company has been the nominal leader in cores per socket. With the introduction of the Ni

When to trust, when to regulate

Dear Bob …"Also as with business deregulation, once a good thing starts to be too much of a good thing, it can become a bad thing. Balance matters," – Bob Lewis ("KJR themes in the news," Keep the Joint Running, 4/7/2008)Malice

Blog and/or Die

It seems blogging has joined parajumping, rattlesnake wrestling, and being personal assistant to Naomi Campbell as the world's deadliest professions. Last week The New York Times revealed just how dangerous writing Weblogs can be. Two prolific t

Take your pick!

Be it Symantec  future plans, simplifying  the installation of OSS, sharing the pain of  nasty updates or piercing one of the latest Microsoft apps stack , whatever your pleasure or your inclination you should find worthwhi

Getting into the Groove, Part 2: Taking Groove in house

Enlisting an outside service to host your Groove 2007 server certainly has merit, as I discussed previously. But companies with the in-house expertise can reap benefits by running the server themselves. First, you gain greater control over managing t

Burned by Acrobat and Windows Update…on the same day!

I'm starting to hate Windows Update. No matter how many times I try to disable the Automatic Updates feature it somehow manages to re-enable itself, often with disastrous results. Case in point: This week's &quot;Patch Tuesday&quot;

Virtualization is alive and well at ManageFusion 2008

I'm here in Las Vegas at the Mirage Hotel attending this year's Symantec/Altiris ManageFusion Event. It was one year ago at this time that Altiris announced that it was being purchased by Symantec, and if you ask anyone at the show (employe

Make a switch. Make a video. And VMware may select you to win a MacBook Air.

Looking back in time, VMware was one of the only real players in the virtualization space for quite a number of years. Over time, they've made a great name for themselves in the virtualization space and built up a sizeable marketshare. But now t