Opinion

An architecture for engineering AI context

The challenge is not how much context an AI system can hold at once, but how intelligently it can decide what context matters for any given action.

By Sean Robinson

Mar 24, 202610 mins

DatabasesGraph DatabasesNoSQL Databases

SMB Tech News Today; 4/5

* MS email customers looking at instability. Microsoft has this problem with all their hosted services–especially during my time on Spaces. Now it's Hotmail, which is related to their Office Live email services. Seems Microsoft is increasing ca

By Oliver Rist

Apr 5, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

GE Warranty By Any Other Name Still Smells

Too many cooks spoil the broth, and perhaps the extended warranty as well. That's what one reader has to conclude after seeing Good Guys, CompUSA, and GE all fail to honor an extended warranty on an expensive plasma TV. "I have a relative I

By Ed Foster

Apr 5, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

Interview: Virtualization Management Q&A with Opsware CTO Tim Howes

Tim Howes, CTO of Opsware, recently sat down with me to discuss the subject of management within the virtualization space. Once you've gone down the road of virtualizing more than a single server, you quickly start to realize how important a goo

By David Marshall

Apr 5, 2007 6 mins

Software Development

Spring founder says, “Want money? Follow the IP”

Rod Johnson of Spring/Interface21 fame talked with Martin LaMonica at CNET and came up with this nugget of wisdom:Rod Johnson, the creator of the popular open-source Spring framework, has boiled down the question of open-source business viability to

By Matt Asay

Apr 4, 2007 2 mins

Open Source

Crystal unclear

Regular Cringe correspondent K.U. writes in about a recent out-of-Business Objects experience (or OOBO) upgrading Crystal Reports for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. I quote: I ordered a Crystal Reports upgrade for MS Visual Studio 2005 from Business O

By Robert Cringely

Apr 4, 2007 2 mins

Small and Medium Business Software Development

Handling a glitch during a presentation

<p>You know the drill, and you're prepared for your talk. You know your audience, know your slides, and know your venue. But you can’t prepare for everything. And you can’t prevent everything. Bad things happen, apparen

By John West

Apr 4, 2007 6 mins

Careers

Have a coke, cash free

The cash-free vending machine is making a comeback. A company called Isochron will be installing cashless vending machines in the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport this year. The hype around cashless vending machines started back in th

By Ephraim Schwartz

Apr 4, 2007 3 mins

Technology Industry

I swear I didn’t do it

At first, everything went smoothly at the small vending services company. I quadrupled the speed of the ASCII terminals, and the data-entry people no longer needed to sit and wait for each screen to refresh. But all would not be well forever. The Uni

By InfoWorld Anonymous

Apr 4, 2007 3 mins

Data Management

DRM a little DRM of me

Free at last, free at last … Finally, four years after Apple iTunes opened for business, one of the four major record companies has agreed to drop digital rights management and allow unfettered MP3s to be sold online. Good golly Miss Molly. Everybo

By Robert Cringely

Apr 4, 2007 2 mins

Small and Medium Business Software Development

No green-sanctimony intended (well, much)

Blogger Rex Hammock has taken me (and InfoWorld) to task for an article I wrote for our final print edition in which I talked about the environmental benefits of our moving to a Web and events business. (So as to not make it too personal, perhaps, Re

By Ted Samson

Apr 4, 2007 3 mins

Technology Industry

Circuit City

Dear Bob … What's your opinion of Circuit City's move to cut 3,400 "overpaid" sales staff, replacing them with lower-paid equivalents? – Curious Dear Curious … Without any inside information, I'd still guess that Circuit

By Bob Lewis

Apr 4, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

VersionOne extends agile reach

Looking to demonstrate the benefits of agile development methodologies to smaller user sites, VersionOne released this week a free five-user version of its agile lifecycle management application. The full-featured community edition of the product, ca

By Paul Krill

Apr 4, 2007 1 min

Technology Industry

Parasoft tests C, C++ apps

Parasoft announced this week it is shipping two application testing tools for C and C++ development, which are focused on the embedded systems market but also can be used for enterprise-level applications. The company is featuring the two products at

By Paul Krill

Apr 4, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

Test Center Tracker: Go virtual, get cash for your servers

Virtualization pays off: Well, it pays off if you're a Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) customer, at least. Ted Samson has the details on the Sustainable IT blog, but here are the basics: You develop a virtualization plan, apply for the pro

By Stephanie McLoughlin

Apr 4, 2007 1 min

Technology Industry

InfoWorld LIVE! #9: The Evolution of Cell Phones

Again, we had a rerun this past week because my jet setting co-host, Scott Draughon, had to hob-knob with the stars in California. We're back this week, however, and our topic is the future of cell phones. We're talking with Stephane Marcea

By Oliver Rist

Apr 4, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

Wireless Security: How much is enough?

The first couple of wireless routers I set up for my home and office networks, several years ago, came wide open: that is, they were preset at the factory to a common SSID with broadcast enabled, no encryption, and no MAC authentication. The point wa

By Martin Heller

Apr 4, 2007 2 mins

Software Development

When will we focus on Service Design?

Over the last few years I've written a lot on service design, and while there as been a few good articles around this topic, I'm finding it interesting that so much time and energy is spent on ESB and governance, and not on the foundations

By Dave Linthicum

Apr 4, 2007 2 mins

Software Development

Microsoft Announcements Around Virtualization Products

Microsoft is making quite a stir around the virtualization community as it has announced more than a few products these past few weeks. A lot of news came out of the Microsoft Management Summit, and we even had a scare about delivery dates. One magaz

By David Marshall

Apr 4, 2007 1 min

Software Development

Windows Meeting Space is worthy of conversation

Though no substitute for whiteboarding, Vista's collaboration platform performs some nifty tricks

By Oliver Rist

Apr 4, 2007 4 mins

Small and Medium Business Software Development Technology Industry

SMB Tech News Today; 4/4

* The FBI's ongoing hunt for virtual crime. Seems the explosive growth in virtual worlds is prompting the FBI to check into gambling on Second Life. Maybe they'll check into illicit wagering on hobbit-tossing contests in World of Warcraft,

By Oliver Rist

Apr 4, 2007 1 min

Technology Industry

Lumen: Open source SaaS

Just when I finished writing about how open source licenses have little to say about SaaS, along comes Lumen with an open source SaaS platform. Microsoft talks about Windows Live Core. Salesforce talks about Apex. But PHP applications are out there a

By Matt Asay

Apr 4, 2007 2 mins

Open Source

Everything as a Service

I was reading an interesting piece by Matt McAlister that discusses "Media as a Service" in which the "domain name for an online media service is becoming sort of an abstract utility or maybe just a brand address for media services rat

By Dave Rosenberg

Apr 4, 2007 2 mins

Open Source

Vista log, continued

I sure hope nobody thought I was singling out Zone Labs and Microsoft's Outlook team as being more worthy of criticism as anyone else. Far from it – they were simply the two whose software irritated me earliest. That was before I tried to instal

By Bob Lewis

Apr 4, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

XenSource Pushes Forward With Release of XenEnterprise 3.2

Server virtualization provider, XenSource, announced the general availability of their latest commercial virtualization platform, XenEnterprise. The upgraded version offers SMP support for Windows guest operating systems and adds support for addition

By David Marshall

Apr 4, 2007 3 mins

Software Development

How to totally screw up a classic leadership situation

<p>In the "do what I say, not what I do" department this week I met, and failed to handle well, a communication/leadership situation at work. Which just goes to show you that sometimes situations get away from you, and the best you ca

By John West

Apr 4, 2007 5 mins

Careers

Guest Blog: Open source expert speaks out on GPLv3

Mark Radcliffe joins us this week to give his expert opinion on the latest draft of GPLv3. Mark is a friend and one of the industry's premier IP attorneys, especially with open source licensing questions. He is outside counsel for the OSI and ch

By Matt Asay

Apr 3, 2007 6 mins

Open Source

Why VECD is Irrelevant

The Virtual Desktop crowd is salivating at Microsoft's latest tweaking of the Windows Vista licensing model. Dubbed Windows Vista Enterprise Centralized Desktops (VECD), this modification allows organizations to deploy Vista as a virtualized OS

By Randall Kennedy

Apr 3, 2007 2 mins

Small and Medium Business Software Development

H-1B visa petitions hit cap limit on first day

The United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced today that petitions for H-1B visas for 2008 exceeded the cap limitation on the very first day that submissions were being accepted, April 2, 2008. See a related H-1B blog post

By Ephraim Schwartz

Apr 3, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

H-1B reform bill to seeker stricter enforcement of visa program

At last there seems to be a recognition on the part of some politicians that the H-1B program as it is now administered is unfair. Unfair because it allows the largest American companies to hire foreign guest workers at lower wages than American work

By Ephraim Schwartz

Apr 3, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

Web 2.0 and the open source 1.0 ball-and-chain

An interesting thing is happening. Technology is moving forward. The licenses that govern that technology are not. I just spent the last two hours with Bungee Labs, a company that is basicaly building Sourceforge for the 21st Century. Here's wha

By Matt Asay

Apr 3, 2007 2 mins

Open Source

Imation StorSentry monitors the health of backup devices

If you are worried about the reliability of your tape drives and cartridges, a new product from Imation, called StorSentry, should interest you. StorSentry was initially developed by HiStor, a French software company that entered a partnership with I

By Mario Apicella

Apr 3, 2007 3 mins

Technology Industry

Total cubicle destruction (time waster)

One of the things that all of us OSS business monkeys eventually learn is that we spend way too much of our time on conference calls with attorneys. Today I came across my new favorite game over on Adult Swim – 5 Minutes to Kill Yourself. It's l

By Dave Rosenberg

Apr 3, 2007 1 min

Open Source

The world’s second largest software company

…is disguised as a hardware and services company. Yesterday's WSJ has a great article on IBM's software business, focusing in on the impact that Steve Mills has had in building it up. Some interesting facts from the article:IBM's M&a

By Matt Asay

Apr 3, 2007 2 mins

Open Source

IBM on the GPL (We don’t like you very much)

Steve Mills has sounded off on the GPL. From reading these comments, and from watching IBM over the years, it seems that IBM is a fan of any open source software that it can incorporate into its products (or product line) without giving anything back

By Matt Asay

Apr 3, 2007 2 mins

Open Source

SMBs: Think About Buying an Office Condo

BusinessWeek just did a feature on a burgeoning trend in the SMB space: buying an office condo. The trend here in the Big Apple area is similar, but, affected by high urban pricing, has evolved into larger companies creating more joint office campus

By Oliver Rist

Apr 3, 2007 3 mins

Technology Industry

Whole new Vistas

And they say computers aren't sentient … It was time to move into a new laptop. This meant deciding between Vista and XP, and between staying with Office 2003 or moving on to 2007. I'm well past the stage when new versions of software are

By Bob Lewis

Apr 3, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

Google Maps all wet?

A traveling Cringster who asked to remain nameless was seeking the fastest route from Toronto, Canada, to London, England, so naturally he consulted Google Maps, which told him it would take only 29 days and 15 hours. I understand that 5,572 kilomete

By Robert Cringely

Apr 3, 2007 1 min

Small and Medium Business Software Development

Test Center Tracker: Vista Service Pack snippets slip out

Vista SP1 comes early: If you're a Vista adopter, you might have discovered that Microsoft newest OS isn't without its flaws, such as a lack of certain device driver and software compatibility technology many users had expected. Well, if yo

By Ted Samson

Apr 3, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

PG&E dangles cash as virtualization incentive

How would you like to have your monthly data-center energy bills dramatically slashed while freeing up precious rack space, without taking a performance hit? Not a sweet enough deal? What if up to $4 million in cash incentives was thrown into the pot

By Ted Samson

Apr 3, 2007 4 mins

Technology Industry

Ignore the data-center power crisis? Don’t press your luck

Even organizations that are ineligible for PG&E's Virtualization/Server Consolidation Projects Incentive Program (or other utilities' variants) should give virtualization, and other greener, more energy-efficient technologies, some seri

By Ted Samson

Apr 3, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

JBoss, SOA Software partner on governance

JBoss and SOA Software this week announced a partnership through which SOA Software will offer governance and other capabilities for Web services deployed on the JBoss application server. Enterprises deploying SOA applications on JBoss middleware are

By Paul Krill

Apr 3, 2007 1 min

Technology Industry

SMB Tech News Today; 4/3

* Vista gets new licensing options. The Redmondites just issued two new licensing options for Vista Enterprise customers. Option one covers diskless computers, option two covers a client version of Windows on servers so users can run them elsewhere v

By Oliver Rist

Apr 3, 2007 1 min

Technology Industry

IT in the days before computers

I hate to sound like a geezer, but hey, you kids just have no idea. Years ago, in the mist of the primeval past before computers were standard office equipment, I worked for a Fortune 500 company where "office automation" consisted of two I

By InfoWorld Anonymous

Apr 3, 2007 3 mins

Data Management

Freeing IT from the end point

Distinctions in client hardware will soon be irrelevant, allowing IT to focus on app delivery No one can say exactly when it will happen or which company will be the first to do it, but at some point in the next, say, five years, when a new employee

By Ephraim Schwartz

Apr 3, 2007 4 mins

Technology Industry

The Changing Nature of Enterprise Architecture and Do SOA Vendors Need an SOA Education?

The Changing Nature of Enterprise Architecture and Do SOA Vendors Need an SOA Education? Download file…

By Dave Linthicum

Apr 3, 2007 1 min

Software Development

Oracle Linux customers “idiots”?

Now, even I won't go this far. Unwise, yes. But idiots? And yet that is what this ZDNet story reports:Melbourne company Opes Prime Stockbroking told ZDNet Australia that in the weeks following its announcement to adopt Oracle Linux, upset Linux

By Matt Asay

Apr 2, 2007 1 min

Open Source

Microsoft OBAs are too little, too lame

The headline might be a little too rough on Microsoft, "too little, too lame" but I think the company needs to wake up to where the world is headed. While Microsoft offers yet another tactic to keep Office relevant, the world of enterprise

By Ephraim Schwartz

Apr 2, 2007 2 mins

Technology Industry

Here's an email I just got from Cisco's outside PR, touting the company's Big New Social Media Plan: Dear @ FIRST NAME@, If you're interested in why and how networking giant Cisco is leveraging new media to grow audiences online,

By Robert Cringely

Apr 2, 2007 1 min

Small and Medium Business Software Development

Dell Competes with ToughBook

Panasonic sent me a ToughBook a couple of years ago. This was still the full-bore, can't kill it ToughBook that looks like a space ship component. (Now, Panasonic's introed new ToughBooks that are shorter on toughness, longer on style and

By Oliver Rist

Apr 2, 2007 1 min

Technology Industry

You may have already lost!

One of Cringeville's favorite mustachioed villains, the Recording Industry Association of America, has developed yet another dastardly plan. The RIAA has set up a web site and a hotline offering alleged file swappers a special discount on lawsui

By Robert Cringely

Apr 2, 2007 2 mins

Small and Medium Business Software Development