Opinion

TechWorld Speaks With Simon Crosby from XenSource

TechWorld was able to catch up with XenSource CTO Simon Crosby in London where he was recently discussing the background to the XenSource and Symantec deal. Interestingly, they were able to get much more from Simon, as he offered up his opinions on t

Yahoo under fire for revealing info to Chinese government

Sometimes chickens do come home to roost. Back in October 2005, I wrote about Yahoo turning over e-mail account information to the Chinese government, resulting in a 10-year prison sentence for a reporter who posted material on a foreign Web site abo

Curl Demos

In my review of Curl 5.0, which posted today, I called out a generic page for Curl demos, but I didn't go into the details. First, before you run any Curl demos, download and install the Curl RTE. There are three demo areas: Enterprise software

In AMD-Intel square-off, memory proves key

When machines were configured with 4GB of main memory, the Intel Xeon-based server proved between 1.4 and 5.1 percent more efficient. However, at 8GB, the Opteron server was between 6.1 and 12.7 percent more power-efficient.

Black Duck helps with GPL changes

Black Duck Software announced Monday version 4.4 of protexIP/development, a platform for software compliance management that now accommodates changes reflected in the new GNU General Public License (GPL) v3 license. The release features capabilities

Reply All

You know, it never fails. You go on vacation, or just take a couple days off and you come back to hundreds if not thousands of emails. And of course it takes you a while to go through them all and you never know which ones are the important ones unti

Test Center Tracker: BRMS wars, mainframe futures, and encryption caveats

BRMS Pushmi-Pullyu: Doctor Doolittle's two-headed llama has nothing on ILOG's JRules, a product that is moving forward and backward at the same time. JRules 5.0, which James Owen reviewed in June 2005, was a silky combination of strong perf

The Scouts get into grid computing, Mercury releases new PS3 SDK, and the weekly news summary

<p>In today's enterprise HPC update we get the strongest evidence to date that HPC has gone mainstream: the Scouts are doing it. Mercury releases its new MultiCore SDK for building applications on the PS3, and the latest edition of the Wee

Blonde ambition at Defcon

Reporter Michelle Madigan came to the 15th annual Defcon conference in search of a good story. Instead, she became one. The NBC producer was hoping to capture undercover video of hackers for an upcoming Dateline segment. But Madigan ignored two salie

Dilbert Goes Open Source

Or at least Dilbert's boss is trying to get him to use open source software because "it's free." Click on the image below to view last Friday's cartoon at the official site. Dilbert creator Scott Adams has long been involved

Make mashups secure

Mashups offer unprecedented agility in developing lightweight Web applications for the enterprise. Here’s how to keep them from becoming a security risk

Enterprise mashups: A blend of risk and reward

Business can’t live without mashups or open source

The ABC’s of RIA

Frameworks for rich Internet applications can be lightweight or heavyweight, open or closed, and almost anything in between

Open source upheaval

Support-based business models and collaborative software communities have changed the software industry forever. Is it make or break time for conventional vendors?

Net co-founder pushes router innovation with lean, green Anagran FR-1000

While the Test Center hasn't given this is a test run (yet?), it certainly sounds like Roberts's company, Anagran, has developed a highly sophisticated and innovative piece of network hardware that's primed for efficiently handling the

Asigra Targets Virtualization with its 64-bit Software

Asigra claims to have the answer to the growing challenge of protecting virtualized server environments. They said that its agent-less Televaulting product is the first native 64-bit backup software for virtual machines which gives it an advantage in

Symantec Updates SRM Solution With Virtualization Support

Symantec has unveiled a new release to its Veritas CommandCentral 5.0 product family, a key component to its Storage United Initiative to help enterprises address their most pressing storage challenges with a unified, software-oriented approach. The

Separating data from the UI

Dear Bob …I'd like to submit a topic you may be able to shed some light on. I hope you can find a way to make this into something more generally useful to your readers. There are a lot of traditional ways to do manage projects that may very we

Crying about not being rich enough (NY Times)

I've had no interest in blogging lately. Too much work and crazed baby to deal with. But it's good to know that there is lots of complete rubbish for people to read while I abstain from writing. Take today's NY Times masterpiece "

Virtual Iron Named Windows IT Pro Editor’s Best for Virtualization

If you play the "first thing that comes to mind" game, and someone asks you to name a virtualization platform, more often than not, someone will yell out VMware or specifically VMware ESX Server. But this time, Windows IT Pro yelled out Vir

Red Hat Launches Beta Program for Enterprise Linux 5.1

Red Hat has officially launched the Beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1, and with it comes a whole list of welcomed improvements. Virtualization was a key feature added in the RHEL 5 platform, and the virtualization support in 5.1 received a

Second Life: Reliable, it Isn’t

The big news today&nbsp;in Second Life (SL)&nbsp;is that it now supports voice. I downloaded the new client to&nbsp;my fastest&nbsp;desktop&nbsp;and tried to attend a voice meeting about technology for developers. I gave up after

SOA Beginning to Pay Off

According to this IT organizations that made the investment in SOA infrastructure significantly outperforming companies that develop only web services, or JBOWS, according to a new benchmark report from Aberdeen Group. "The report, 'SOA Mid

AMD pays company to say Intel is bad, Itanium rev spells trouble for vendors, and much more

<p>In today's roundup of enterprise HPC news we find AMD paying an analysis firm for a study saying Intel's EU monopoly practices are bad, the Itanium ecosystem floundering as it waits for 2009 to get here, PathScale compilers moving

The Geek Week in Review

So many stories, so little snark. Here are a few news items that almost slipped under the radar.G Whiz. When pundits predicted Silicon Valley would revolutionize the cellular industry they were right, but they may have been off by one letter. It&#039

Safari for Windows: So fari, so bumpy

If there's one thing the Windows world has been clamoring for, it's another web browser. Right. Apple has heard the cries and released Safari for Windows. I've been using Safari since the day of its public release, and I've found

File encryption dos and don’ts

Before you dive into an encryption project, consider these questions and caveats

FTP: New tricks for an old dog

Rules-based enhancements help FTP revamp its old-school image

Parallels Launches a New Public Beta for Mac

Parallels has launched a new public beta of their Parallels Desktop for Mac product today. According to the company, the public beta includes several new features. Coherence windows now work with Expose! This means that each individual Windows applic

The value of source code

In the past week I heard about two fairly large companies who are in a bit of a jam. Back in the days of the Internet Boom, they purchased an "E-commerce server" from one of two separate niche software vendors (i.e. ISVs). These two ISVs we

A Google phone with ads is beyond the pale

There was an old ad campaign that went something like, "It's not nice to fool with mother nature." And I believe the perpetrator of this crime was quickly zapped by lightening. Google's rumored Google phone, which will offer consu

Government orchestrates 16-state raid on behalf of Microsoft and others

We all live with limited resources — individuals, businesses, and yes, even governments. If the limitation isn't monetary, as it never seems to be for the government, it is at least limited by the number of available employees. With that in min

Employees keen on green but need reminding

73 percent of American workers would like to see their companies be more environmentally and socially responsible, but many aren't embracing energy-conservation practices in the office to the degree they do at home.

Sun: Back in Black

Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW), under CEO Jonathan Schwartz's focused leadership, has managed to turn a profit for the third quarter in a row with its results announced earlier this week. While Sun has been a whipping boy in recent years, I thi

Linksys Router Comes Up Short

<P>It's not a big surprise to discover that a product in the real world does not quite measure up to the claims in its performance specs. But one reader was nonetheless a bit shocked to find that his Linksys wireless VPN router can't

You Can’t Spell your own Job?

OK, I had a different blog planned today, but I just got my PASS newsletter and got inflamed again. I hope I don't have to go over this again, but I'll do it as many times as I have to. DBA = A single DBA. DBAs = More than one DBA. DBA&#039

Doing the Microsoft Mash

It's been a good week for Microsoft and surveys. The Redmond reprobates own the most valuable technology brand in the world, according to a survey by Interbrand and Business Week magazine. The Windows wonks are second overall to Coca-Cola (I see

And more about PC lockdown

Dear Bob …Normally I agree with you, but I guess this time, I am one of the prudes ("The new prudes," Keep the Joint Running," 7/9/2007), and am somewhat pleased with it.Why? I work on a team of 6 people supporting server and desktop

Is IBM’s Big Iron also Big Green?

As part of Project Big Green, Big Blue is pushing its System z mainframes as an energy-efficient alternative to server racks As the list of arguably green technologies continues to expand, it's interesting to observe how many of the candidates a

Taunting the CIO

Think you can use technology to keep a tight rein on user behavior? Think again

VMware Fusion Ready to Launch? Last Chance for Half Price!

Rumor has it that VMware Fusion is going to be released into the wild very soon – some are saying as early as tomorrow! If that's the case, you better act quickly if you still want to purchase the Mac OS X virtualization product at half price. O

VMware Takes its IPO Show on the Road

VMware's initial public offering (perhaps the hottest IPO of the year) of 33 million shares is expected to hit on August 14th, with Wall Street projecting a price range of $23 to $25 each. Amazing! EMC only paid $625 million for the virtualizati

VMware Updates ESX Server 3.0.2 and VCB 1.0.3

VMware has announced a minor dot release of its flagship VMware ESX Server product. The new ESX Server 3.0.2 release adds quite a list of additional supported features for a minor dot upgrade. In it, you will find the following improvements: The prod

Vizioncore Launches Two New Beta Programs

Vizioncore proudly announced the Public Beta Release of its flagship product – esxRanger Professional 3.2. The product has added new features to help it continue down the path of leading the way for backup solutions in a VMware VI3 Server environment

Trying it all out

So at the moment, I have my Nokia N95 playing some MP3s while connected to my MacBook Pro via USB syncing more MP3s and pics via Nokia Media Transfer, and I've taken a call, installed Google's Gmail app, browsed the Web a bit via Wifi, all

SOA Domain Analysis…Do You Know What to Do?

So, what's one of the first and most difficult steps in defining your SOA? It's having a complete semantic and service level understanding of your domain, of course. While the work required is pretty straightforward, the amount of effort an

A few tips for the Nokia N95

So I've spent another day with the N95, and have a few tips to share. First, I had to import some certificates into the phone to deal with some privately-signed secure services I run. I Googled for some info on this, and eventually found several

Steve Yegge on Marketing

One other very noteworthy keynote at Oscon last week was Steve Yegge's presentation "How to Ignore Marketing and Become Irrelevent in Two Easy Steps which you can view on Blip.tv. While Steve had some technical problems displaying his slide

Ask The Experts: It’s What Project Leads Really Want

August Microsoft Downloads

Microsoft has released a lot of stuff for developers to look in the last week. I had downloads going most of the day last Friday, even though I have an 8 Mbit/s business cable connection to the Internet. I still haven't installed everything I&#0