Opinion

Alternative defenses buy patch-management time

IPS solutions help close hackers' window of opportunity between vulnerability discovery and patch application

Technology plays both sides of the aisle

There is no shortage of crossover from the enterprise to consumers and back again

What scales, what doesn’t, what’s relevant, and what isn’t

Dear Bob … Does it make sense to reject a process *just because* it doesn't scale well? As you know, this is a technical problem as well as a management/development process problem, and I'm thinking about the social engineering and manage

Exchange 2003 Service Pack 2 brims with new features

Microsoft taps into the gadget craze by making its collaboration platform more PDA-friendly

A new generation of RFID

Affordable Gen2 tags are easier to read and play well with others

RFID moves beyond the warehouse

Tagging technology opens new horizons for asset management and control

Making governance work

Dear Bob … How do I stop executives from trying to bypass our governance process? I feel like the kid in the Netherlands trying to plug the dike – every time I stick my thumb in a leak, another one opens up. We've tried to make this as unobtru

SOA Drivers

As I'm working with corporate America, as well as the government, I'm finding that SOAs are like snowflakes…no two are alike. I'm also finding that everyone has their own definition of SOA, and I've seen everything from messagin

Re-engineering life interruptions

We may not be able to get rid of the constant interruptions in our day, but we can manage them better

AMD’s new fab, new focus

New chipmaking facility doubles its capacity while steering Intel’s x86 into a legacy architecture

Tracking the buzz at SNW Fall

Amid an ocean of new products, CDP and SAS/SATA products make the highest waves

More on the undercutting contractor

Dear Bob … A recent posting, about a contractor who undercut his manager, makes me wonder. Bob, what would you say if somebody sent you this request for advice?: Dear Bob … I work in the graphic arts industry, and though I'm glad they reward

When competitive advantage isn’t advantageous

Be willing to rethink your business model, or risk going under

The H-1B swindle

A new study shows that companies hire foreign workers for cheap labor, not skill

Is Intel victorious?

From the desktop to the server room, Intel’s advance shows no sign of retreat

Oracle wins big with its Innobase acquisition

When it comes to competing with MySQL, why beat 'em when you can make 'em join you?

Engineering sets x86 server products apart

They may all be Intel inside, but other factors come into play at purchase time

Itanium: Not dead yet

Despite Intel’s renewed focus on the x86 market, its original 64-bit chip won’t stay down

Fedora Core 3 software RAID boot hang fix

If you've just updated to FC3 kernel 2.6.12-1.1380_FC3 on a box with software RAID, you're probably wondering why it's hanging on boot at "Remounting root filesystem in read-write mode:". The answer is that there were some so

Jabber fixes

I spent more than a few minutes trying to remedy a problem with an RHEL3-based Jabber2 server today that's worth noting. Following an abrupt powerloss, the jabberd process wouldn't start, exiting with "ERROR: sm died. Shutting down ser

IBM Eats DataPower…Now What?

Wow, DataPower hit it big. IBM just expanded their technology portfolio, adding DataPower to their now expanding list that leaves many to think that they are mixing one hell of a SOA cocktail in the back. However, it also leaves many open questions..

Microsoft security: Something old, something new

A peek into Windows Vista and IE 7 betas shows some welcome security upgrades

Job No. 1: Keep IT simple

In IT, perception trumps reality from the front office to the boardroom

Scaling the SAS learning curve

Adaptec starts its SAS campaign with new products and a few tools to educate the masses

Microsoft poised to take on TiVo

Windows Media Center 2005's features top TiVo's, but TiVo has the price advantage — for now

Managing metadata

Data about data provides enormous opportunities to organize information in new and useful ways

IT Workforce Composition

A recent posting included a question regarding the make-up of the IT workforce – how many are employees and how many are contractors. A reader was kind enough to provide some data, which I'm making available with his compliments. Thanks, Dave. –

Beware the on-staff backstabber

One of my staffers began whispering to the administration that my abilities were inadequate

Piracy stings developers most

Criminals stealing Apple’s upcoming x86 OS are swiping rent money from Mac developers

Making a routine of citizen journalism

Web-enabled tools make it easier than ever for anyone to document the events of our world

Are CIOs headed for extinction?

As CFOs take a greater stake in IT, the chief information officer's days could be numbered

Persistence within a SOA…What You Need to Consider

I've been thinking about where databases exist in the context of a SOA. Truth-be-told traditional approaches to integration are really about keeping persistence at the points, within the source or target systems. However, with the use of service

HP eyes AppIQ

AJAX at a glance

The latest buzzword in Web development is a case of "everything old is new again"

Google does IM right

It took a visionary company to realize that open standards are the magic catalyst for messaging

AJAX cleans up

The enterprise has eyes for Web apps that look and act like desktop software

Putting AJAX to work

For enterprise apps, asynchronous JavaScript and XML offers more than just UI razzle-dazzle

When you distrust your employer

Dear Bob … I am currently working for a small IT company, and am earning slightly below the low-end of the pay range for programmers. Recently, my employers applied for a grant, which provides a certain amount of money to be used to supplement the

A company that tells its employees they aren’t very smart

Dear Bob … We're going into our annual benefits sign-up period and we're being told, for the second year in a row, to make "smart choices." To me the clear implication is that at least some of us have been making "dumb choi

Belated thanks for jobs well done

When your favorite open source security tools go commercial, don’t look back in anger

Mastering data comes at a price

Evaluating that data and ranking its importance pays off in the long run

ISPs get angry, Oracle still hungry

Cranky columnist finds a worm in every Apple

Microsoft faces a serious open source press

Even major hardware players are getting into the game — albeit slowly

Catching the virtualization wave

Fujitsu embraces Brocade's switch approach to storage virtualization, while IBM sounds its seniority tuba

VoIP firewalls new line of defense

Flurry of VoIP-aware devices from vendors such SecureLogix and BorderWare monitor traffic and minimize risk

VoIP may be vulnerable to barrage of threats

Separating voice from data traffic on the LAN ranks high among precautions

So What Questions Would I Ask on a SOA Certification Test?

I was thinking, if we created an exam to certify architects in the basics of SOA, what would those questions be? Here are some I came up with:…

Preventing your boss from stealing your work

Dear Bob … What do you do when your boss is lying to you? When he says "No I'm not doing this," and two days later launches a press release stating "HIS" brand new idea. This action makes one not trust one's boss. This

Hard disks: the autumn years

It makes more sense to keep our data in the same place we use it

The importance of interaction data

Analyzing the activities of your users is a great tool for continuous software improvement