Drew Robb

This year, Datamation readers easily picked one product in the Enterprise Linux Application over all others: The Mozilla Organization’s (www.mozilla.org) Firefox 1.0 browser. The runner-up spot went to VMware Workstation 4.5 by VMware, Inc. (part of EMC, Inc.). Other finalists in this category were the GNAT Pro Toolset from AdaCore and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server […]

Air travel safety has come a long way. And technology is partly to thank for it. According to industry statistics, airplanes are the safest way to get from Point A to Point B. Driving a car is positively hazardous in comparison. In 1950, 17 out of every one million commercial airline passengers worldwide died. But […]

Trucking has traditionally been a low-tech arena. The best you might expect would be a CB radio, a cell phone and maybe a backend server for orders and driver assignment. But the slick image and real-time savvy of Fed Ex and UPS now is bleeding into the more traditional world of trucking. As a result, […]

According to the pundits, we are a 50/50 nation, evenly split on most political and cultural issues. But there is one topic where there is nearly unanimous agreement — Everyone hates spam. Unsolicited bulk email saps employee productivity, wastes network resources, drives up Internet costs, and clutters the network with viruses, worms and Trojans. ”We […]

George Washington had some excellent advice on the topic of security: ”Offensive operations, often times, are the surest, if not the only means of defense.” Unfortunately, when it comes to securing the network, that usually isn’t an option. Although it would be effective, police tend to frown on companies hiring roving bands of mercenaries to […]

Minnesota State Colleges and Universities do more than 100,000 Web transactions per day and run 24/7. Dozens of databases handle all aspects of college administration. This amounts to 1.5 TB of disk space, more than a billion records and a growth rate of 30 percent per year. What modern marvel of database technology accomplishes this […]

The success of the iPod has garnered most of the plaudits for Apple in the past year. Its digital music player is a must have on most teenagers wish lists. Its 5.6 ounce box contains 40 GB of music — enough for 10,000 songs. Though not as high profile as the iPod, another Apple product […]

It would seem an oxymoron to say “supercomputing” and “low end” in the same breath. Yet, the big news in the supercomputing arena this year has been its emergence as a force outside of its traditional spheres — big labs and big government. Corporate America, in particular, is beginning to grasp the competitive edge supercomputing […]

Anti-virus is running on every computer in the building. Sophisticated intrusion detection and threat analysis systems keep you apprised of any attempts to gain access to your network. Firewalls provide a robust perimeter, and digital rights are managed so well that no employee has managed to sneak a file or email to a friend at […]

‘Information wants to be free.” This has become an oft-repeated mantra of the open source movement. The saying applies both to gaining access to software source code, and being able to freely copy and distribute books, music, videos and other forms of intellectual property. For IT managers, or even individual computer users, however, that mantra […]