Search

Phil Zimmermann says he doesn't regret creating the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) strong encryption program, even though terrorists may use it. But while encryption may protect our Internet transactions and […]

I couldn't come up with any reasons last week as to why .Net would revolutionize Web services. I've heard from many defenders of .Net during the past year, and not […]

Now that Visual Studio .Net has launched (on Feb. 13 - that wasn't a Friday, was it?), will someone remind me why .Net is destined to revolutionize Web services? Let's […]

A couple of weeks ago, I suggested that IBM has an ace in the hole called 'hardware devolution.' The best way to describe hardware devolution is to examine the so-called […]

Red Hat has done wonders to help Linux penetrate the server market. An AOL Time Warner purchase would almost certainly upset Red Hat's relationship with its customers and server vendors. […]

One of my predictions for this year was that the economy probably won't recover as soon as everyone hopes. I pinned the future of the economy on how well we […]

Many thanks to a reader named Kevin, who identified some eye-opening limitations in the new Windows XP feature called fast user switching. Fast user switching is Microsoft's version of multiuser […]

The book of Deuteronomy (loosely translated as 'the second law') says that if a prophet makes predictions that don't come to pass, he is a false prophet and shall die. […]

I recently compared Microsoft's proposed solution to DLL hell with the way Unix developers avoid ".so" hell \(Technology, Nov. 12\). The term .so stands for shared objects, which are more […]

My recent columns about Windows XP and Linux sparked a number of questions from readers. The answers are worth sharing because they shed some light on a recently leaked memo […]

Some of you may know of humorist Jean Shepherd, the late author and narrator of the movie classic A Christmas Story, which was derived from his book In God We […]

I've been looking into Windows XP, and I may purchase a copy. No, I haven't sold out. My integrity is unassailable - unless the Microsoft PR folks discover my one […]

I recently spent some time chatting with Tim Witham, director of the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), about the lab's new scalable test platform. Here's the idea in a nutshell: […]

I know it has been weeks, but I'm still reeling from the news. Earlier this month, Gartner Inc. strongly recommended 'that enterprises hit by both Code Red and Nimda immediately […]

The gist of last week's column was that the disorganization of information on the Web is at the heart of the growing pains we're experiencing in the Internet economy. As […]

I have a theory about why we aren't recovering from the dot-com implosion as quickly as we ought to be. Perhaps it's just myopia, but I blame at least a […]

Standards drive the market. That's a truism if ever there was one. But that doesn't make it a simple truth. There are de facto standards, closed standards, open standards and […]

Last week, I suggested that Microsoft's promotion of XML and its attempt to hand the C# language to a standards group are decoys to distract you from the long-term consequences […]

When Microsoft promoted its support of Kerberos authentication in Windows 2000 as evidence of its new commitment to open standards and interoperability, only a few Microsoft stockholders and someone named […]

I just finished a marathon session rewriting Hypertext Preprocessor code, otherwise known as PHP4 (see www.php4.org). In case you're not up to date on your open-source projects, PHP is a […]

There are plenty of application service providers hosting e-commerce sites, but what I want to know is why ASPs aren't taking over many of the most tedious and duplicated efforts […]

I RECENTLY SPENT the better part of a week working with the latest version of the open-source GNOME graphical desktop environment on Linux. I've decided that the only way to […]

WE TAKE YOU TO THE STUDIOS OF America's favorite game show, the only kind of jeopardy that even an IT security manager can like. Alex: Welcome to IT Jeopardy, I'm […]

THE SPIRIT OF OPEN-SOURCE might once have been summed up as 'share and share alike.' This philosophy has its roots in the GNU General Public License (GPL), which is the […]

ECLIPSE is an enormously popular Java-based integrated development environment (IDE). IBM started work on Eclipse software in 1999, and Eclipse 1.0 premiered in October 2001. It soon developed a life […]

IT'S TIME ONCE AGAIN to get out the cyber-crystal ball and make predictions about the near and distant future. But first, let's take a look at the scorecard from last […]

I found it difficult to decide what to write for my Christmas column this year. My first plan was to provide a list of gift suggestions. For example, Sun could […]

Life imitates art, or at least popular entertainment, more often than we'd like to think. Some of the current drama in the IT industry has intriguing parallels to a recent, […]

SUN MICROSYSTEMS enters the office of noted therapist Dr. Sickmund Fraud and lies down on the couch. 'Doc, I think I'm having an identity crisis,' Sun confides. Dr. Fraud: Well, […]

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN, I asked myself last week, if a court opened an inquiry into what was really behind the Blaster-B worm. It doesn't take much imagination to reconstruct the […]

THEME SONG (to the tune of Pinky and the Brain, a Steven Spielberg cartoon about two genetically altered lab mice who routinely try to take over the world): They're Boiesy […]

IT'S TIME for yet another standards rant. This time, I have in my sights a far more subtle villain than programs that refuse to run properly if you're not running […]

SOMETIMES THE STORY behind a high-profile news story can be pieced together from the correspondence of the major players. I thought I'd take a peek into SCO's mailbag to see […]

NOW THAT the Microsoft antitrust trial is over and Microsoft is no longer distracted from its full-time effort to eliminate the word competition from the English language, I notice that […]

SCO RECENTLY FILED a $1 billion lawsuit against IBM. The most notable allegations are that IBM leaked SCO intellectual property to Linux developers and that IBM used said intellectual property […]

'WELCOME, FOLKS, to the first game of the software World Series, with Microsoft going up against the Customer. I'm Harv Coney, doing the play-by-play with my co-host, Hank Kee. 'Bill […]

EVERY YEAR after the dust of the holidays settles, I like to wipe off the old crystal ball and take a peek into the future of IT. Before I get […]

GIVEN THE YEAR'S EVENTS, it should come as no surprise that digital rights dominate my 2002 'You Can't Be Serious' awards. These annual awards recognize truly astonishing achievements in IT […]

THERE WAS SOMETHING about the idea of Napster that always bugged me. Deep down, I knew it wasn't really about sharing music with friends. It was about getting free stuff, […]

IT'S STRANGE TO SAY that PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor) has only recently reached the point where it's ready for prime time, since PHP is already the most popular Apache module, running […]

I'VE SAID IT BEFORE, but it's worth repeating. All network traffic should be protected by strong encryption. I recently learned that even SSL is simple to bypass, thanks to a […]

THERE'S AN OLD THREE DOG NIGHT SONG that goes, 'One is the loneliest number that you'll ever do.' In enterprise computing, there are times when one is the riskiest number […]

IT'S NICE THAT THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE recognizes that Microsoft abused its monopoly power. But someone really needs to go after guys like Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer and Jim […]

I'M GETTING TIRED OF WAITING for the Web economy to restart, so I'm going to offer two suggestions to give it a kick in the pants. One of the many […]

COMPUTER WORLD'S OWN FRANK HAYES recently wrote a column chastising IT for being complacent about bugs in software despite the fact that bugs cost U.S. users about $60 billion per […]

NO, THIS IS NOT AN OFFER for a complimentary aphrodisiac drink. But now that I have your attention, I'd like to recommend a cheap and easy way to block unwanted […]

I WAS WORKING from my home office a few years ago when my access to a Web site called NC World was suddenly cut off. My service provider told me […]

I HOPE YOU CAUGHT the Computer world article about Microsoft's proposal for a new security chip called Palladium [QuickLink: 31000]. I read the story a half-dozen times, and I'm still […]

AS MOST OF YOU KNOW, much of success has to do with being in the right place at the right time. A golden opportunity is about to emerge, thanks to […]

I DON'T MEAN TO BE A WET BLANKET, but as much as I keep nearing we're in an economic recovery, you couldn't prove it by me. The evidence of said […]