2006

Today I was reading about how Wal-Mart has been offering Compaq notebooks for $398. Even more shocking was the potential for seeing the prices dropping even more by “Black Friday.” How much, you ask? How about a brand new notebook for around $199.
Now let’s stop, take a deep breath, and begin the descent back to [...]

The Task Manager is also known as ‘that thing that comes up with Ctrl-Alt-Del.’ While this was the case with Windows 9x and ME, it’s changed a bit with NT, and even moreso with Windows XP. With Windows 9x, you had the ability to bring up the Task Manager, or reboot with a [...]

Hear expert tips and advice for combating the Internet-borne threats that can jeopardize the security and performance of your small or mid-sized business (SMB).
Pre-register here for Wednesday’s Web event.
WEBCAST: Why Today’s SMBs Need Web Security
FEATURING: Paul Stamp, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research and Deb Cobb, Senior Product Marketing Manager with Sophos
HOST: James Hilliard, Moderator for [...]

The animated TECHTip Tutorial is available here.
Coding is the term used to describe the process of sending data in digital bits - 1s (ones - with a pulse, positive voltage or signal) and 0s (zeros - no signal or pause). The term originates from Morse Code and its dots (short duration signals) and dashes (longer [...]

Looks as if Friday has fallen upon us and yet, I am still glued to this thing known as WordPress. In a previous report, I brought up some experiences based on my recent findings with WordPress. The WordPress install here at Lockergnome on the other hand, has been running pretty well. However my own unnamed [...]

Syngress Publishing, Inc. has announced the publication of WarDriving & Wireless Penetration Testing by Chris Hurley, Frank Thornton, Dan Connelly, Brian Baker, and edited by Russ Rogers.
According to Joshua Wright, Senior Security Researcher, Aruba Networks, “In this book, five recognized experts in the wireless security field have put together a guide to help you learn [...]

Queue is a monthly magazine written specifically for the software development and IT practitioner community. Rather than covering emerging technologies from a solutions-oriented perspective, Queue focuses on the problems and their impact on the IT environment. Readers rely on Queue’s unique take on technology.
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Trace Logs are something of an extension of the Event Viewer, in that they essentially track everything that the system does, but only after a specific event has occurred, such as a page fault or disk I/O. These events are tracked for a specified period of time, and each triggered trace log is stored [...]

The animated TECHTip Tutorial is available here.
As electricity creates a magnetic field (north-south), it is called an electro-magnet. This force attracts (pulls toward) or repulses (pushes away) the rotator or shaft (rotating/sliding object). This push-pull action is called a Sisyphus, after a character from Greek mythology who was doomed to an eternity of having to [...]

Things have been pretty wonky lately as I have been knee deep in a project that means dealing with the wonders and frustrations of servers running WordPress. The thing with WP is that it’s so easy to screw up.
I myself would have dealt with this a whole lot more, had it not been for Mitch [...]

It’s hard to believe, but after all of the problems, delays and so on, we are finally going to see a mad rush for the big box stores as the PS3 is released on November 17th.
While I remain sure that the Xbox is going to do a lot better than the last time around, I [...]

One of my clients had an old Compaq desktop that crapped out on him the other day. I’d actually upgraded it for him some time ago (against my advice, mind you) by adding RAM, a bigger hard drive and a clean re-load of Windows XP. The machine performed admirably during this time, but clearly [...]

Performance Logs and Alerts is the primary tool by which you can create baselines, document activity, and also track objects and counters over a period of time. The purpose behind creating baselines and tracking data over a period of time is to perform what’s known as trend analysis, which is basically the concept of [...]

The animated TECHTip Tutorial is available here.
Each antenna gain situation is different based on terrain, environment, receiver sensitivity, etc. That is, every 3dB of gain from the antenna equates to a virtual doubling of ERP [Effective Radiated Power].
A good rule of thumb is that for every one watt of ERP, the effective communications distance [...]

Today is a very special day for one of our very own. Lockergnome’s Brandon Watts, in conjunction with WeatherBug, released the latest revision to the programming language known as Leopard. Thanks to a number of meetings, planning, and plenty of research, WeatherBug has stepped up to the plate and decided to seize [...]

Since game theory can be loosely considered to be part of the main subject of these columns, and since games are fun, today I want to share a game invented by my wife, Patricia Mehan (She is a stubborn Irish woman who did not take my name when we married), and me on a long, [...]

Learn how to automate and enforce software provisioning of the entire IT stack, from operating systems to patches to applications.
HP OpenView Configuration Management solutions automate the management of software such as operating systems, applications, patches, content, and configuration settings to ensure that each computing device is maintained in the right configuration.
Proven across enterprises of every [...]

A DNS server maps hostnames to IP addresses for DNS clients. These clients query their assigned DNS servers when they need to resolve a hostname. A DNS zone stores the records for a specific namespace. A forward lookup zone map hostnames to IP addresses where as a reverse lookup zone maps IP addresses to hostnames.
DNS [...]

The animated TECHTip Tutorial is available here.
In order to reduce Collision and Broadcast Domains, LAN switches and bridges emerge to provide for switching/routing of packets.
Unlike hubs and repeaters that broadcast every packet, LAN switches are able to filter and forward by the address of the packet called the MAC [Media Access Control] address. A LAN [...]

Could this be a viable alternative to iTunes at last? Maybe, but only from the independent music farm of course. After all, its mission is that of a DRM-free music selection. But for many AmaroK users, the real question is “why?” Simple, it’s called a shot over the bow to the application known as Songbird.
At [...]