The great thing about my kids having Macs is not having to rebuild the darn
things every six months because their machines have more viruses than The Andromeda
Strain. The bad part? Having to drive an hour to get a new iBook power supply!
This trip did help me get close to my son and do a little market research.
According to my salesguy, the Mac TV commercials have increased business, as
have the new line of Intel-based gear.
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Posted by Doug Barney on April 05, 20070 comments
I used to spend eight to 10 hours a day writing and thinking about networking
technology (God only knows how I stayed sane) as executive editor of
NetworkWorld
and then editor in chief of
Network Computing
.
This experience allowed me to bluff my way through a meeting with StillSecure,
which has a new network platform that is entirely open source. While focusing
on security and unified threat management, the Java-based Cobia platform includes
a veritable smorgasbord of functions, such as routing, firewalls, virtual private
networking, DNS and WiFi.
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Posted by Doug Barney on April 05, 20070 comments
In the rush to embrace Web 2.0-style apps and development, some have turned
a blind eye to a problem Microsoft knows all too well: security. For instance,
did you know AJAX apps can be taken over by hackers just as Windows and IE apps
can?
Hackers
can "hijack" the JavaScript and read what's written inside the
JavaScript messages. Google and Microsoft AJAX tools are both affected.
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Posted by Doug Barney on April 05, 20070 comments
I love the Bud Light "Real Men of Genius" commercials even more than
I love the beer. In fact, I can listen to a dozen or so of the commercials straight,
while I tap out after six cans of the beer.
My son Dave is also a fan, and just let me know about a bunch of PC-related
parodies. They aren't quite as good as the real thing, but "Mr. Giant E-Mail
Attachment Sender" is pretty dang funny.
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Posted by Doug Barney on April 05, 20070 comments
The European Union is so tough on monopolies, it'd probably like to ban the
board game, if it could.
Now, Apple
is feeling the EU's fury as iTunes is being looked into for limiting competition.
At issue is the fact that an English music lover can download songs only in
England.
But in Europe, people travel a lot; English soccer hooligans go to Germany
for strong beer and high-quality fist fights, and the Germans go to the French
Alps to watch their riders lose in the Tour de France.
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Posted by Doug Barney on April 05, 20070 comments
This weekend, I took my son Nick to
Blades of Glory
, the new comedy starting
Will Ferrell and Napoleon Dynamite. It's a great film, once again proving the
fancy critics with large vocabularies wrong (for comedies, my family only goes
to movies that critics have utterly panned, like
Dude, Where's My Car?
).
I'm not here to tell you how to spend your $12. I'm here to tell you that the
stars of this movie included the Web as part of their press junket just as much
as "Good Morning America" and "Live With Regis and Kelly."
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Posted by Doug Barney on April 04, 20070 comments
A decade ago, diskless PCs were all the rage, at least according to the vendors,
analysts and the sheepdog IT press. Even though they were cheap (not cheap enough,
though) and relatively secure from data theft (this was before every single
worker had a high-speed 'Net connection), diskless boxes never really took off.
With virtualization, Citrix and Microsoft's terminal services all surging,
maybe local drives are now a bit passé, at least for desktops. Recognizing
this possibility, Microsoft this week announced new
licensing options for Vista, including the ability to run Vista on a variety
of thin clients. One option lets the software run on "virtual machines
centralized on server hardware."
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Posted by Doug Barney on April 04, 20070 comments
Redmond Channel Partner
magazine, written for Microsoft resellers (some
partners consider this word a slur but they do, in fact, resell software), has
a newsletter written by Lee Pender. I love Lee's stuff, except when it sinks
in how much better his is than mine!
Recently, Lee tackled
Google, asking if Google knows too much about us and is using this information
inappropriately.
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Posted by Doug Barney on April 04, 20070 comments
Yesterday, I gave you a heads-up on a patch for a flaw within the Windows animated
mouse cursor. Microsoft felt the hole was severe enough that instead of waiting
for the monthly Patch Tuesday, it
created
a mini-Patch Tuesday
, which is today.
Get your mouse fix
here
Posted by Doug Barney on April 03, 20070 comments
Who reaches the end of more stories: those thumbing through a newspaper or magazine,
or those staring at a shimmering 1024x768 pixel LCD? Apparently, we'd
rather
singe our eyes with a computer screen
than enjoy the crisp, traditional
look of ink on paper.
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Posted by Doug Barney on April 03, 20070 comments
Want to save money on your next purchase of Microsoft software? No, don't buy
illegal dupes from Bulgaria. I'm not talking about saving 100 percent; I'm talking
about substantial discounts on volume purchases.
Knowing how to negotiate and deeply understand Redmond licensing options is
important, but as licensing guru Scott Braden points out, you can't start to
bargain until
you know exactly what you already have.
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Posted by Doug Barney on April 03, 20070 comments
Tomorrow, Microsoft plans to release an
out-of-sequence
patch to block a zero day exploit
. This is an unusual flaw in that hackers
can use the animated cursor to take control of the entire computer.
Attacks have been limited so far, but they could pick up with news of the flaw.
Best get to patchin'!
Posted by Doug Barney on April 02, 20070 comments