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Open source in general, and Unix in particular, appears to be far buggier and less secure than is Microsoft's code in general and Windows XP in particular. You might not believe that, but any count of security vulnerabilities reported since about mid-2001 will lead you to the same conclusion. Mentio...
During a break in a series of discussions on US HIPAA compliance for Canadian health care players, one of the attendees regaled the group with a long brag about how his company's techies had defeated a phishing attack. According to the story, the company's wizards had discovered a phishing attack ba...
The use of electronic voting in this year's U.S. elections has the makings of the greatest IT-related disaster yet. Barring a miracle, this is a done deal, a disaster unfolding as we watch. The problem, unfortunately, is that it's too late for alternative technologies to come in while a number of ju...
Everyone knows PCs are faster than Macs, but Macs cost more. Right? There are two issues here: cost and performance. Right now I want to focus on the cost side of the myth, leaving performance for another column, possibly in late September. For today, I'm simply going to argue that Macs and PCs are ...
Lots of people believe that the reason there are more attacks on Windows machines than on Unix machines is simply that Windows dominates desktop markets. According to their logic, 90 plus percent of the desktops should lead to 90 plus percent of the attacks. The question is whether they are right. L...
The best method known for getting people extremely angry at you is simply to be right where they're wrong -- especially if you give them any opportunity to read a moral subtext into whatever they're wrong about. It's sometimes okay be a tiny bit smarter than the people you work with, but it's always...
Last week a dashboard light in my car (a Volvo V70R) came on, leaving me groping for the manual while trying to survive traffic. As it turns out, an "ETS" light is a failure warning from something called the "electronic throttle system," so the obvious thing to do was find a place to pull off the hi...
At a working lunch last week I had the misfortune of being seated next to some guy from Boston whining about the misery and risk introduced into his life by Sarbanes-Oxley. I kept wanting to ask him what he thought his job was as a CFO, since all Sarbanes-Oxley really does is establish a basis for l...
Several weeks ago we were visiting my mother in law in Victoria, B.C., just across the strait from Port Angeles and close enough to Seattle to share some of its rain. She's proud of her Scottish heritage and rejoices in her ancestral stereotype when it comes to parting with a nickel. I was surprised...
My wife has a Dilbert cartoon on her office door in which one of the characters says: "If you have any trouble sounding condescending, find a Unix user to show you how." She's a Mac user and they were worse even before they all became Unix users too. Or maybe not. But finding out whether the average...
For the last three weeks I've been talking about the impact the new Sony, Toshiba and IBM cell processor is likely to have on Linux desktop and datacenter computing. The bottom line there is that this thing is fast, inexpensive and deeply reflective of very fundamental IBM ideas about how computing ...
Two weeks ago I looked at IBM's forthcoming cell processor architecture and last week speculated about the impact it might have on the x86 desktop. This week, I want to go beyond that and look at the impact the cell architecture will have on the battle for server dominance over the next five years.
Last week, I talked about the cell processor expected from Sony and IBM. This week I want to think out loud about what happens in the industry if Toshiba launches a PC based on this processor into the Asian market and IBM promptly follows suit with a series aimed at the American and European markets...
Three years ago, IBM, Sony and Toshiba announced a partnership aimed at developing a new processor for use in digital entertainment devices like the PlayStation. Since then, the product has seen a billion dollars in development work. Two fabs, one in Tokyo and one in Fishkills, New York, have been c...
The English language is a great tool. It's expressive, powerful, inclusive, and evolves through the democratic and open-source processes of accepting change on the basis of common usage. Great, but you know what it doesn't have? Enough useable swear words. Think about it, you probably know eight to ...
This week's column is about the nature of the software needed to go with the elections administration hardware laid out in last week's column. In brief, the idea was to ignore political reality long enough to imagine a system in which the voting support application runs on the local servers but capt...
What would your answer be if a selection team charged with hiring a new CIO to develop and implement an organization-wide "strategic systems architecture" were to ask you what management considerations most differentiate use of Windows from use of Linux? The right answer, I think, is that the...
My server has been getting a lot of hits lately from searches that request things like "windows vs. Unix term paper." On the one hand, I suppose this reflects increased academic interest in Unix. On the other, it does make me wonder about the marking keys used to judge a student's success in differe...
In going through a stack of resumes last week, I came across one from a person, certified as expert by both Microsoft and Cisco, who claimed to have "architected secure network solutions" at a previous employer. When I recovered from the consequent daydream about flying lead balloons, I decided to s...
In my recent commentary on the role dishonest and incompetent IT textbooks play in education, I used the acronym PHB (pointy-haired boss) to refer to people who just don't get it with respect to systems. Unfortunately, that also demonstrated that I don't get the global nature of the LinuxInsider rea...
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Wind River Linux Drives New Solutions for Software-Defined Vehicles
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