Opinion

yum update errors

So while this is a bit of a re-hash on a problem folks have found a while back, it does warrant a revisit in that Fedora core 6 is now out and I'm anticipating a flurry of questions on why YUM Updates fail for all mirrors. It would seem

InfoWorld SOA Executive Forum…Be there or your SOAs will fail.

Okay, perhaps not fail, but you won't know as much. Don't forget I'll be speaking at the SOA Executive Forum in New York on 11/8. You can register for this event here, as well as find out more about the agenda, the event, and the venu

Review: Firefox 2 yields goodies for users and developers alike

Every time I hear about a new dot-zero release of any software, my QA-engineer antennae immediate rise up since dot-zero software releases usually mean major changes with some bugs sprinkled in for good measure. After spending the last two days with

Living With Office 2007 Beta Part I

Been working on how to organize this without writing a post that's 5000 words long. So I figure I'm just going to break it out a couple of apps at a time. This post covers Outlook and PowerPoint 2007: the first because I live in it, and the

Test Center Tracker: BEA AquaLogic BPM keeps business processes flowing

Swimming in the process pool: Faulty business processes can result in costly hiccups in the day-to-day workflow of your organization. In an exclusive InfoWorld review, Senior Contributing Editor James R. Borck finds that BEA's AquaLogic BPM 5.7

Putting data to work for the bottom line

Companies that recognize the value locked away in customer data will trounce rivals that don’t

To patch or not to patch: the third-party question

Should you install third-party patches while waiting for the real thing?

InovaWave Delivers Virtual Machine Performance Pill

Through the use of their innovative software solution, InovaWave claims that they can increase virtual machine density and performance at the same time. In today's world of server virtualization, server consolidation seems to be the king of the

Mystery Book From Buy.com

Even the most basic e-commerce transaction such as buying a book online can still have its unexpected surprised. One reader was recently left scratching his head when his purchase from Buy.com turned out to be a Navy book – not a naval book, mind you

Complain Early. Complain Often.

I was discussing some of the missing features with one of the SQL Server product managers a couple weeks ago, and he said something that I hadn't really thought about before. I asked him how some of these things could have made it out of beta, a

Visiting Vista RC2, Part Two

Vista's coming along, but security and app-support questions remain

Throwing down the gauntlet over power and cooling costs

EMC's efficiency claims may be overreaching, but it’s a debate that customers need to hear

Unisys Selects PlateSpin Software

PlateSpin Ltd. announced an agreement with Unisys Corporation in which Unisys will offer PlateSpin data center optimization technology as part of the Unisys Real-Time Infrastructure solution for enterprise virtualization. Unisys offers the solution t

SQL Server 2005’s Schema Problem–An Elegant Solution

There's a problem with schemas in SQL2K5 that I encountered again this week, and I put my head to it and developed a very elegant solution that I thought I'd share with everyone. Problem: When you connect to SQL through membership in a Wind

Living With Office 2007: Prologue

As I said in my column, after doing my little feature on living only in Web 2.0 productivity applications for a whole week, I just had to do one of living in Office 2007 beta (techie refresh). Besides, I happened to have a Dell Precision M90 super-no

A peek into Vista RC2 and Office 2007 beta

We may need to change Oliver Rist's byline to "intrepid explorer": After spending a week in the world of browser-based apps and living to tell the tale, Oliver's now venturing into Office 2007 beta. So far, it's looking prett

Flip or fly

Dear Bob …I am an engineer currently employed by the federal government. The leader position, a non-federal job, for one of the biggest projects in my field is available. I helped in some of the organizational development for this new, multi-year,

Practical 3-D telepresence

Full telepresence could be the next best thing to being there

Apple’s in-house approach to external services

Xserve Xeon comes to life as a platform for no-touch hosting of user-friendly services

Aplix Develops a Unique Virtualization Technology

Aplix Corporation unveiled its newly developed patent-pending user-space virtualization technology that can dynamically generate virtual execution spaces for native applications running on information appliances. In recent years, computer viruses and

SWsoft Industry’s Fastest-Growing Supplier of Virtualization Technology

Operating system virtualization software Virtuozzo from SWsoft is growing fastest among all vendors — 98 percent — in the hot overall market for virtualization technology, according to industry analyst firm IDC. The worldwide industry sales of virt

Virtual Iron Certifies HBAs in Virtual Iron 3.0

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of software solutions for creating and managing virtual infrastructure in the data center, announced that Virtual Iron 3.0 will support host bus adapters (HBAs) from both Emulex Corporation and QLogic. Virtual Iron 3

Fedora Core 6 expands admins’ options

Boasting better performance, improved features for admins and developers, and enhanced virtualization management, The Fedora Project today announced Release 6 of Fedora Core. Admins may be most interested in an enhancement to the installer, which ena

Gear6 sets sights on virtualizing cache

Startup Gear6 is getting ready to launch a new product, Cachefx, that promises to bump up the performance of any storage system by one order of magnitude or more. How? Imagine an appliance filled to the brim with terabytes of RAM that sits at a nice

Giving advice to the boss

Dear Bob …I have bosses who are running projects into the ground. They have implemented wasteful processes that produced ineffective or even negative results. Should I simply go along with these bad decisions to keep my "relationships"?(A

Test Center Tracker: Sun Java Studio Creator screencast

New AJAX screencast The newest addition to our AJAX screencast series is live! Sun's David Botterill navigates a two-part trip through the Java Studio Creator's AJAX features. Check out Part I here, then follow it up with http://www.infowor

Behind the push for WiMAX

An informed citizenry is your best defense against planned obsolescence

How not to stop a virus attack

Sometimes smart network engineers can be too smart for their own good

A Vista of Licensed Censorship

Let's say you get Windows Vista sometime next year and, after using it a bit, decide it really sucks wind compared to other operating systems like Linux or the Mac OS. Can you tell your friends, family, or your blog readers about your comparativ

SOA and Application Semantics

SOA and Application Semantics Download file…

Google unveils do-it-yourself search engine

In a move that will likely bolster Google's search dominance, the company late yesterday unveiled the Google Custom Search Engine, equipping anyone with the ability to set up a free, tailored Google-powered search engine on any Web site — and m

Oracle SOA suite boasts governance

Oracle at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco on Monday announced availability of Oracle SOA Suite 10g Release 3, featuring governance capabilities. The suite has an integrated, browser-based console to administer policies across multipl

Essential Skills for DBAs

I quite often get asked, 'Sean, since you're such an industry leading expert, what skills do you think a DBA should have?' Well, that's actually something that's close to my heart. The answer is yes. There are so many skills

JRuby milestone is reached

Developers at Sun Microsystems have released JRuby 0.9.1, which will serve as a predecessor to the planned 1.0 release of the programming language. JRuby is Java implementation of Ruby. Highlights of the 0.9.1 release include a 50- to 60-percent perf

Phoning It In

Forgive me if I seem a little depressed, but it's only because I am. The GripeLog website has been down or dysfunctional all weekend, apparently due to a link-spam posting attack that has gotten out of hand. Although I'm sure we'll fig

Managing Linux, the Windows way

Cross-platform tools allows Windows admins to manage Linux resources, but at what price?

Reopening the data mart

Master data management starts with a few small steps — and an updated version of the data mart.

On the road to operating-system glasnost

VMLogix Receives Funding from Bain Capital Ventures

VMLogix, a global provider of virtual infrastructure management technology to simplify the software lifecycle, announced that it secured Series A funding from Bain Capital Ventures, one of the world's leading private investment firms, for $3.5 m

Sun Expands Virtualization Offerings

Sun Microsystems outlined its three-pronged approach to virtualization: harnessing commodity technologies, delivering Sun's own advanced products and technologies, and leveraging Sun's global expertise in providing systems and software. Sun

Desktop Virtualization on the Intel-based Mac

Today's Podcast takes a look at desktop virtualization on the Intel-based Mac platform. Parallels took the reigns early on delivering its Desktop for Mac solution. The company keeps updating the product for its consumers – adding fixes, enhancem

How to leave IT, volume 2

Dear Bob …In surfing the web, I came across this article "How to leave IT" and, as that is the question foremost in my mind, I just had to write. Having somehow survived 28 years in IBM's IT world, smashing my square peg (me) into th

Just when you thought the Backup Wars were Dead…

OK, here's the latest news on the backup wars… and this time I had nothing to do with it. Red-Gate has commissioned a report from the Tolly Group to run a comparative benchmark between them, LiteSpeed, and Idera… a decision I would imagine t

Intermix suit is nixed, Microsoft (almost) gets fixed

It's MySpace and I'll sue If I want to

Cast your vote for IT’s future

Learning where candidates stand on technology issues is tough, but worth the effort

Getting a head start on ITIL

To survive in the 21st century, IT must manage itself based on the services it delivers

Keeping up with advancing malware

Defending systems against wily companion worms and viruses requires inspection discs

Reader Voices: Copyright Duration

How long should copyrights last? Most of my readers seem to think that today's rules – Congress has stretched them out to the lifetime of the author plus 70 years or 95 years for works-for-hire — are excessive. But there is much less agreement

Virtual Machine Software Market Grew 67% in 2005, According to IDC

According to IDC, the worldwide virtual machine software (VMS) market grew to $560 million in 2005, a robust 67% growth over the previous year and topping the 63% year-over-year growth recorded in 2004. "The growth in the dynamic VMS market will

Wyse Announces Enterprise Desktop Virtualisation Solution

Wyse Technology announced a thin desktop device that is optimized for the VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). The solution is based on Wyse's thin client OS technology. As a participant in the VMware Community Source program, Wyse and V