Stories by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

HTML 5: Less than it's cracked up to be

The core idea behind HTML 5, the latest proposed version of the Web's foundation markup language, is to make all resources, not just text and links, widely and uniformly usable across all platforms. Well, that was the theory. In practice, things aren't going to change that much from today's Web, with its reliance on proprietary media formats and methods.

Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols30 March 10 03:35

CrossOver Linux 9: Run Windows apps without Windows

Some Linux users insist that anything you can do on Windows, you can do better on Linux. While there's some truth to that, many of us have Windows applications that make completely leaving Windows close to impossible. That's where CodeWeavers' latest version of CrossOver Linux comes in.

Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols16 March 10 05:54

VirtualBox 3.0: An easy way to mix and match operating systems

Whether you prefer Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X, you can probably get almost everything you need done with your chosen OS. However, sometimes a task demands an OS that you are not currently using. That's where virtualization programs like Sun Microsystem's VirtualBox 3.0 come in.

Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols10 July 09 08:24

Opera Unite

Opera Software's announcement that it's going to bundle Opera Unite, an easy-to-use web server with content-sharing applets, with the Opera 10 web browser sounds great - at first. Upon closer inspection, though, there could be some real security headaches.

Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols22 June 09 13:50

OpenOffice 3.1

While some of the improvements to OpenOffice 3.1 are visible to the naked eye, we found that the most important changes were hidden under the hood.

Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols15 May 09 10:55

Why Software Development Is Lagging Hardware

Your new computer has a 64-bit processor, but your software probably is still 32-bit. Why haven't software developers done more about it?

Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols23 Feb. 09 09:32

What Outsourcers Can Learn from Open-Source Communities

Perhaps your company's outsourcing efforts would go more smoothly if you picked up a few of these effective programming tools and methodologies from open-source developers.

Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols10 Nov. 08 08:58

What's Red Hat Doing in the Virtualization Business?

Even before Red Hat bought the virtualization company Qumranet, with its Linux KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) platform, Red Hat had made it clear that it was moving into virtualization in a big way. At its annual Red Hat Summit in June, the Linux powerhouse announced that it would be deploying its Embedded Linux Hypervisor, oVirt, which is based on KVM in its server line. This lightweight, embeddable hypervisor currently enables users to run run Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows VMs on Linux.

Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols23 Sept. 08 10:37

Can open source replace Microsoft Exchange?

Once upon a time at a NASA space flight center a long way away, I was an e-mail administrator. At the time, the 1980s, e-mail was still chaotic. The RFC 822 standard was only beginning to bring rhyme and reason to e-mail. One of RFC 822's competitors, the Common Messaging Calls (CMC) X.400 standard, wasn't making much progress, but then Microsoft adopted it in 1992, added the concepts of folders to it, and re-named the result Mail Application Programming Interface (MAPI). And, ever since, the e-mail world can broadly be divided into two camps: the RFC 822 Internet compliant e-mail group and the MAPI-compliant Microsoft Outlook/Exchange pack.

Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols27 Aug. 08 10:43

Developing Open-Source Business Policies That Work

We know your company uses open-source applications. We also know many of you already have an open-source policy. Sort of. As CIO.com discovered when researching the adoption of open-source in enterprise IT, a quarter of respondents have a formal policy in place to control how such software is chosen, supported and deployed. Another 18 per cent expected to adopt such a policy in the next 12 months. But those who have some kind of policy aren't necessarily thrilled with it; just 45 per cent said their policies are very effective.

Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols14 July 08 11:04

Blog: Will MySQL Keep Lighting up LAMP?

For an executive who had just had his company bought for a cool billion a few months ago and was on the eve of announcing a major update to his business' flagship database program, former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos, now Sun Microsystems' senior vice president for databases, didn't look comfortable. Mickos had come to the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit at the University of Texas Super Computing Center to explain that MySQL was not about to abandon Linux. His audience, the movers and shakers of Linux business and development circles, were not overly impressed.

Written by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols18 April 08 13:50
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