Illegal wiretapping is a dangerous wedge
The phrase "the thin end of the wedge" is a good description for those things that, if allowed or tolerated, enable other things that are bigger or worse to happen.
Stories by Mark Gibbs
A closer look at RingCube's MojoPac technology
Last week I began to discuss <a href="http://www.MojoPac.com/">MojoPac</a> from RingCube, which uses operating system virtualization to create a Windows XP virtual machine on a host PC running XP.
Saving the environment or just saving bucks?
This week's article in Network World about green data centers is interesting because it reflects the IT industry's growing awareness that we have a serious social responsibility to take care of the environment. While this sounds positive there's a real risk that things that appear to be "green" will turn out over the long run to be quite the opposite.
The wonders of Drupal
Here at Network World, we use Drupal for our blogging platform. Drupal -- which runs on any platform that supports Apache (1.3+) or Internet Information Server (IIS5+) and PHP (4.3.3+), and MySQL or PostgreSQL -- is impressive in its scope</a> and the level of community effort that has gone into improving, enhancing and extending its features and facilities.
Processing, a language for visual output
It would seem that the computer science world is, in general, populated by firm believers in the idea that you can never have too many programming languages. I've covered all sorts of languages over the centuries I've been writing Gearhead and today I want to discuss a really cool language called Processing.
Wiretapping, whistleblowing and IT ethics
Recently a retired AT&T employee named Mark Klein announced at a Capitol Hill press conference that he had evidence that "An exact copy of all Internet traffic that flowed through critical AT&T cables ... was being diverted to equipment inside the secret room."
Why Skype and Vonage must die
Skype and Vonage illustrate what is wrong with user communications: They are "closed" and not standards based. These strategies support business models that are not in line with 21st century wants and needs. They have to go!
Dealing with hippos
So you're thrashing out the final details of, say, how to implement the next phase of your CMS or your ERP system. You've gone from the big picture ("We need a system to ...") and after countless meetings finally got down to details ("We need these fields on this form and this link will point to ...").
Web application disaster planning
On the evening of Sept. 17, one of the biggest hosting providers in the US, Layered Technologies in Plano, Texas, suffered a major security breech.
Hackers managed to access the company's support database and download client data on something between 5,000 and 6,000 user accounts.
I just need PHP 4.3.2 or higher!
Let me start by asking if any of you have experience with Plesk? Plesk from SWsoft is a Web-based control panel for Windows and Linux servers that has been adopted by a number of hosting providers.
Outlook to iCal but not automatically
Is it too much to ask? All I want to do is to extract new calendar items from Outlook in iCal format every day at a set time. The reason for this is I am planning to buy a big, new Mac Pro (dual 3.0GHz quad core, dual graphics cards, 8GB RAM - yes, greed is an ugly, ugly thing) so that I can run VMware Fusion to host guest operating systems (including multiple copies of XP and Vista) alongside OS X, which is now my favorite desktop environment.
The physics of IT
Science is how we try to explain the universe and what the guys who do science (usually called "scientists" but you can call them anything you like because most of them are pretty nerdy) really want is a TOE. No, not those things that stop your feet from fraying; what they want is a Theory of Everything, a theory that allows them to start from first principles and deduce (if I might quote Douglas Adams) the existence of rice pudding and income tax.
The imminent death of Internet radio
On March 2 the Copyright Royalty Board decided to raise the royalty rates for Internet radio stations. My goal this week is to get U.S. readers fired up enough to sign a petition and write to their member of Congress, and demand that this decision be reconsidered in a rational and fair manner, because neither of those attributes have much to do with the current adjudication.
Consumers, politicians, toolbars: Full of bull
I am reading a fine book: On Bullsh*t, by Harry G. Frankfurt, professor of philosophy emeritus at Princeton University. Now you may think that BS is a risible topic, but, as Frankfurt points out, BS matters.
AppLogic: Enterprise infrastructure
Last week we began discussing 3tera's AppLogic, an infrastructure virtualization system that we're all kinds of excited about. This week we'll take a detailed look at how AppLogic works its voodoo that it works so well.