2007 April

You have likely heard the expression “kill two birds with one stone.” Well today, I killed a flock of them with a tiny stone. Yes, today produced a valuable lesson for me - not all wireless vendors are going to bow to the existing prefab demands of the hardware industry. In short, I just […]

The Vista Upgrade Advisor is a valuable tool to both network administrators and home users. It lets you perform the following tasks prior to upgrading to Vista:

Determine if you can install and run Vista.

Determine the version of Vista that is best for you.

Determine if your hardware and software is compatible.

In part three of this series, […]

MySQL’s source code is open in the sense of being publicly available, but unless you understand it, it’s essentially closed to you. In Understanding MySQL Internals, Sasha Pachev, a former member of the MySQL development team, provides a comprehensive tour of MySQL 5 that reveals the inner workings of this powerful database. You’ll go right […]

Learn how to monitor the IT infrastructure proactively to predict and prevent IT failure.
IT organizations within the small and medium-sized business market are typically overextended, being comprised of a limited number of resources with major skill gaps (usually restricted to Windows server and desktop).
This white paper examines the Single Point of Contact Monitoring Service, […]

Wow, and to think back when I was growing up, tossing the TP (toilet paper) over trees, houses and cars was the “thing to do” for misbehaving youths. But hacking into and then basically stealing from a company like AOL is unbelievable, regardless of the perceived rewards for the offenders misguided efforts.
It’s a sad state […]

You also need to consider application compatibility before you upgrade to Vista. Some of the applications you use on your current may not function correctly, or at all, under Vista. The upgrade will not affect most new programs and applications. However, older ones may not function correctly under XP.
The easiest way to find out if […]

The migration to Windows Vista is not going to happen for at least a year, according to users of Outpost Firewall Pro surveyed twice in the past six months by Russian security company Agnitum.
Agnitum’s survey results track independent polls conducted by Harris Interactive, Computerwoche and PC Welt, among others, concluding that users are taking a […]

Learn why requirements management is an integral part of any effective product lifecycle, supported by metrics and examples.
Requirements management is an often underutilized discipline in software development. Yet the economic benefits — lowered development costs, faster development and better products that delight customers — have plainly been demonstrated in study after study. In this paper, […]

Well, I certainly think that this may be Vonage’s last cry for help. Even if I had some hard feelings, I never wish to see the men and women working there, the customers or anyone else who has enjoyed their services suffer from the potential of Vonage being thrust into bankruptcy.
Vonage has some fairly strong […]

I will admit right away that I have not been all that hip to the Mandriva side of the fence these days, especially regarding PCLinuxOS. For myself, I have been happy with Ubuntu and for others looking at expanding into an addition OS, I have been pushing Linux Mint. Well, after looking at PCLinuxOS from […]

Most vendors design their operating systems to run on a minimum set of hardware requirements to ensure adequate performance. Ignoring these requirements can result in a failed installation. Verify that the hardware in your system meets the minimum hardware requirements before upgrading.
The minimum hardware requirements for Vista include:
Vista Home Basic

800-megahertz (MHz) 32-bit (x86) processor or […]

In network parlance, “packets” are packages of data that carry information. Capture them with a software tool like Wireshark or Ethereal and you can peer inside them, reassemble them, and use them to really understand network communication from the inside out. But what do you do with those packets once you’ve collected them? And how […]

It’s been about a year now that I have been working with our Spunik powered access point. Considering this was simply for a small bookstore, we simply selected the appropriate ISP, then hooked up with the Sputnik service itself. At the bookstore itself, we run two Windows computers, a Linux Kiosk and also offer free […]

Here is a logical puzzle I found in similar versions in several places. As always, I claim no authorship, but I am presenting my own retelling of what must be a mythical story. If anyone knows the actual originator on the underlying puzzle, let me know, and I will give credit where credit is due.
Assume […]

You have decided to upgrade to Vista. Before putting the DVD in and starting the upgrade, why not take a bit of time to plan the upgrade so it goes as smoothly as possible. This starts with determining if your current operating system supports an upgrade to Vista and if your system meets the hardware […]

Gnomie Jim Varnado of Tripower Software writes:
Chris, What in the hell is going on?
Way back in 1988 I had a career decision to make whether to become a QuickBASIC 4.5 programmer or a C programmer… an article in Byte magazine by Jerry Pournelle helped in my decision to become a QuickBASIC programmer…
Okay… then came Visual […]

I have to admit, this is not something that I had planned on talking about today. Initially, it was just going to be about this. Yeah, Home Depot selling computers, what’s next? Adequate staffing? With all seriousness folks, today I present to you something that I have claimed was coming. Today, you can legally purchase […]

Bet you never saw this coming! Now Internet Explorer users can enjoy some of those cool Greasemonkey scripts that Firefox users have been hoarding all to themselves. OK, so in reality Firefox users have not really been hoarding anything at all. In fact, Firefox is cross platform and anyone can use the application should they […]

Vista makes it very simple to move from an old computer to a new one. Many people are often reluctant to get a new computer because they do not want to lose their existing files and settings. Fortunately, Vista includes a nifty utility called Windows Easy Transfer that you can use to make the process […]

In recent years the use of XML has grown explosively; as a result, an enormous amount of information is now stored in XML, both in XML databases and in documents on a filesystem. This includes highly structured data, such as sales figures, semi-structured data such as product catalogs and yellow pages, and relatively unstructured data, […]