Last month, I posted that my new MacBook Pro laptop was running more slowly than my year-old iMac – despite the fact that the MacBook Pro had a 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo processor, and the iMac had a 2.0GHz Core Duo processor. To make a long story short, the one area where the MacBook Pro […]
We should all celebrate: Today, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has terminated its proceedings regardng the use of cellular phones onboard aircraft during flight. That’s not to say that they won’t bring the issue up in the future, or that the FCC agreed that cell phone usage within the inescapable confines of a commercial aircraft […]
The über-dotcom’s philosphy states “fast is better than slow,” but their newest beta product, GMail Paper, challenges that belief. Indeed, for some things, ink-on-dead-trees may be better than pixels-on-recycled-phosphor. The folks at Google Labs have also been busy with their latest networking innovation, Google TiSP (code-named Project Teaspoon), a free in-home wireless broadband service. The […]
One of our industry’s most laconic yet unpredictable writers, retired test engineer I.B. Phoolen, has written three new stories for BZ Media’s SD Times and Software Test & Performance. He covers such diverse subjects as network firewalls, the Indianapolis 500 and Homeland Security. You can find links to all these stories on I.B.’s blog. You’ll […]
Team ST&P is celebrating that BZ Media’s Software Test & Performance magazine won three 2007 American Inhouse Design Awards, from the editors of Graphic Design USA. The winners are: • The cover of the October 2006 issue — the floating “root causes” plant• The cover of the November 2006 issue — the carousel horses• The […]
Bertrand Meyer, the designer of the Eiffel programming language (and founder of Eiffel Software, which sells development tools) has just been recognized by the ACM with its 2006 Software System Award. The citation reads, “For designing and developing the Eiffel programming language, method and environment, embodying the Design by Contract approach to software development and […]
There will be no Visual FoxPro version 10, according to the VFP team at Microsoft. Visual FoxPro — which started out, of course, as plain old FoxPro— has been around for more than 20 years; it was created by Fox Technologies, which Microsoft acquired in 1992. FoxPro came from the era of dBase II and […]
My Hawaii-based colleague Larry O’Brien is a believer in storyboarding. On his blog, Larry posted a short review of a Visio-based tool called stpBA Storyboarding, “… which every architect and team lead owes themselves to evaluate. I would say it’s revolutionary, but it’s better than that — it simply makes the way you probably already […]
Characterization testing is one of the most important — but insufficiently discussed — areas of software testing. It’s where you use unit testing to monitor existing code to capture the current functionality of pieces of the application. (The most common use of unit testing, by contrast, is to validate that new code works correctly.) So, […]
I received this pitch today from Event Management Services, a self-described “publicity firm.” Frankly, it’s too amusing not to share with everyone. This is a verbatim cut-and-paste, with phone number and e-mail addresses removed. Note that the the e-mail pitch itself was a rich HTML file with lots of colors, bolding, italicizing, centered text, larger […]
In this week’s InfoWorld, Andrew Binstock (a columnist for SD Times, as well as a technology analyst) wrote a powerful head-to-head review of Java integrated development environments. Andrew looked at Borland/CodeGear’s JBuilder 2007 Enterprise Edition, IBM Rational Application Developer for WebSphere Software 7.0 (what a terrible name) and Sun’s NetBeans 5.5. I heartily recommend this […]
Today, IDG’s newsweekly, InfoWorld, confirmed rumors that surfaced last week: It’s moving to an online-only format. As Steve Fox, its Editor-in-Chief, wrote today, “Yes, the rumors are true. As of today, March 26, 2007, InfoWorld is discontinuing its print component. No more printing on dead trees, no more glossy covers, no more supporting the US […]
My Take this week in SD Times News on Thursday discussed a fascinating presentation from Jonathan Rosenberg (pictured), senior VP for product management at Google. In the column, I made passing reference to Metcalfe’s Law and Moore’s Law. Since I didn’t describe these two laws, and referred to them in adjacent paragraphs, some readers thought […]
A friend forwarded a link to this wonderful product demonstration video for the Rockwell Automation Retro Encabulator. The video’s been floating around the Internet for ages, and I’d forgotten how funny it is. Having just come back from watching several product demonstrations at SD Expo this week, this fictional product seems more realistic than some […]
On March 1, a blog reader responded to the news about the 2006 ACM A.M. Turing Award — which recognized Fran Allen as the first female recipient of this honor — asking a pointed question: I guess the Lady Admiral who wrote Fortran wasn’t very important… So I won’t bother to even name her. After […]
Borland has come up with a thought-provoking list of “Top Ten Blunders” that can lead development teams to introduce unexpected defects into their applications. It’s a real-world list, albeit weighted a little too heavily to builds. While it’s obviously essential to build early and often, and to make sure that your builds are good, it’s […]
I posted a brief notice of John Backus’ passing on Tuesday, but two technology journalists have written touching and moving obituaries. I urge you to read them both. The first is from O’Reilly Media’s Kevin Farnham, who writes on his blog about Backus’ background as an artist and as a creator, not just as a […]
Back when I was studying compiler design in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the name John Backus was often foremost in my mind. He was one-half of the team that developed the Backus-Naur Form, the notation that we used to define language syntax. Backus, who passed away last Saturday, was one of the designers […]
My friend Andrew Binstock has posted a brief, yet fascinating, discussion about the potential power savings by using dual-core processors. In “MIPS per Watt: The Progression,” he tests similar Dell workstations using a Kill-a-Watt electricity usage monitor, and shows that dual-core system using single AMD Opteron and Intel Pentium D processors draw less juice than […]
Trees are important assets – not just for forests, but also for cities. In the small San Francisco suburb where I live, the city government is adamant that if you have to cut down a tree, you have to justify it with a good reason (like, the tree is sick and dying), and you have […]
One of BZ Media’s more eccentric contributing writers is I.B. Phoolen, a retired software test/QA engineer with impeccable credentials and very strong opinions. Since 2000, he’s written a few pieces for SD Times and Software Test & Performance. Now, I.B. has just launched a blog, on which he’s posted some of those articles (and yes, […]
Earlier this week, I blogged about Microsoft’s big patch, the newly released Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 — which is not only for all versions of Windows Server 2003, but also for the 64-bit version of Windows XP Professional. In my column in this week’s SD Times News on Thursday, “Patching Isn’t Just for […]
IP over Avian Carriers. The Y10K bug. Telnet’s RANDOMLY-LOSE Option. The Null Encryption Algorithm. The Etymology of “Foo.” SONET to Sonnet Translation. The Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol. The Infinite Monkey Protocol Suite. Network technology experts Peter Salus and Thomas Limoncelli have compiled the best of the Internet Engineering Task Force specs into one […]
Microsoft and Apple both released service packs yesterday. The Microsoft one is more significant, and applies to nearly all data-center Windows Server users. Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 is for all editions of Windows Server 2003, including Storage Server. It also applies to Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. There’s a huge list of changes […]
A colleague cheerfully pointed out that today, March 14, is Pi Day — that is, it’s 3.14. (This makes more sense in countries where you put the month first; 14.3 for 14 March isn’t very “pi like.”) Frankly, I hadn’t heard of Pi Day before. I’d heard of Pie Day, but this is obviously different. […]
I was chatting with a colleague here at BZ Media’s New York headquarters office (I’m based near San Francisco, but trek out to NY every few months) about how companies react to negative coverage… and remembered this gem from The SCO Group last summer. The June 12, 2006, edition of SD Times News on Monday, […]
Want a free book? I’m giving away two different titles: The first is “Software Security: Building Security In,” by Gary McGraw. Gary covers just about every aspect of software security, from risk management to code reviews, from testing to case development. The other book is “The Software Vulnerability Guide,” by Herbert “Hugh” Thompson and Scott […]
As you know, Daylight Savings Time (DST) in the United States was changed by an act of Congress, so that it starts earlier this year. For me personally, it’s been a bigger nuisance than Y2K (which wasn’t a nuisance at all). Here are three personal anecdotes: 1. On Sunday morning, I used my Garmin StreetPilot […]
The Screen Actors Guild is beefing up the software security embedded inside its pension and health plans, spending half a million dollars to protect its data. The county government in Anne Arundel County, Virginia, was paralyzed for more than a day after an attack last week. Vulnerabilities were found in Google Desktop, where hackers could […]
In my blog comments about the 2006 ACM A.M. Turing Award, won by Frances E. Allen, I wrote, “It’s a shame that it’s taken 40 years to recognize the first woman for the most prestigious award in computing.” A reader responded sardonically: I guess the Lady Admiral who wrote Fortran wasn’t very important… So I […]