One of the best productivity tools I had when I used Microsoft Windows was a collection of portable applications. I missed those tools when I migrated to Linux. Now several open source projects could make portable apps available to mainstream Linux users. Three websites are trying to create that functionality. But the efforts might need [...]
Amazon on Tuesday cracked the cover of its new book-in-a-browser service designed to make it easier for readers to discover new reads. “Kindle for the Web,” as the service is called, doesn’t allow customers of Amazon’s e-bookstore to read their purchases within a browser window — Amazon already has a software download for that purpose. [...]
21st Century Western civilization bears the brunt of the greatest health threat since the black plague. Although not quite as dramatic — there are no bodies in the street or mass graves of the afflicted, for example — the death count is high and climbing, and the toll on company costs (from health insurance to [...]
When the Internet and World Wide Web finally went mainstream in the mid-1990s, new Unix-like operating systems running on PCs went mainstream too. Developers working on these systems had access to a wide range of development tools, but these platforms didn’t initially offer anything like the mature, SQL-based and 4GL-based database frameworks common on traditional [...]
Six major high-tech firms have agreed to toss out the no-solicitation agreements they had reached concerning competitors’ employees. The secret anti-trolling agreements came to a voluntary end on Friday as the Department of Justice announced a settlement with Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit and Pixar. None of the companies admitted any wrongdoing. The Department of [...]
The White House is working with several federal law-enforcement agencies to draft legislation that would make it possible to monitor all Internet communication services, including social networking sites, peer-to-peer messaging and encrypted email systems, according to a New York Times report. “Society has changed the way we communicate, and what we’re looking for is a [...]
As businesses seek new ways to cut costs, IT departments are often placed on the hot seat, and that has fueled interest in virtualization. For example, VMworld 2010, held in San Francisco recently, drew more than 17,000 attendees and saw more than 145,000 virtual machines deployed. However, as businesses rush to virtualize, they too often [...]
Java Creator James Gosling explained why he quit Oracle in an interesting interview on eWeek. It is clear he had no understanding about what happens in an acquisition, particularly for an old school open source unit that has been the exact opposite of a profit center. I’ve been part of a lot of mergers over [...]
As businesses seek new ways to cut costs, IT departments are often placed on the hot seat, and that has fueled interest in virtualization. For example, VMworld 2010, held in San Francisco recently, drew more than 17,000 attendees and saw more than 145,000 virtual machines deployed. However, as businesses rush to virtualize, they too often [...]
There’s no denying Linux is more secure than perpetually-patching Windows, but the past month or so has not provided an ideal demonstration. In August, we saw the arrival of a long-overdue fix for a kernel bug that was six years old; now, in the last week or so, it’s been not one but two root [...]