You don’t have to be a software programmer to be familiar with the principle. Since the early 1970s, Moore’s Law — named after Gordon Moore, one of the founders of Intel — has been universally touted within the computing industry. The law has many variants, but the gist of it is this: Computing power will [...]

How can you separate a legitimate security threat from routine traffic? A recently upgraded software product can help. Computer security experts are fond of reminding people just how vulnerable their defenses really are. And for good reason: No security system, no matter how comprehensive or well-designed, can thwart every possible attack directed against it. Hackers [...]

They haven’t changed the world yet, but there are ways to make them work. If you flip though the technology magazines of a year ago, you’ll likely find a lot of stories touting Web services as the next big new technology you need to know about. The promise: programming standards that would allow different applications [...]

The holiday rush is coming, and as usual, many sites won’t be able to handle the traffic. Here’s how you can prepare for this year, and beyond. It happens every December. The holiday season brings with it hordes of online shoppers, and — despite having months to prepare — many websites aren’t able to keep [...]

Prices for big corporate systems have come back down from the stratosphere, but that doesn’t mean you need to buy. Back in the late 1990s, a software salesman could look you in the eye and say with a straight face that his company’s enterprise system would cost you $1 million. Mercifully, those days are over. [...]

Companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on software to manage their websites and other documents — and getting dubious returns. There’s got to be a better way. The numbers aren’t pretty. According to a Jupiter survey of chief information officers at companies with more than $50 million in revenue, 53 percent will have [...]

Most companies are diligent about backing up their servers and mainframes. But how much vital information are you leaving exposed on laptops and desktop PCs? Computer viruses. Laptop thieves. Fires. Hurricanes. All have the potential to erase, damage, or destroy valuable corporate information. Too bad most companies don’t have a decent backup plan in place [...]

Businesses are starting to use weblogs — those impromptu lists-cum-journals — as powerful tools for knowledge management and communications. Businesspeople might be forgiven for rolling their eyeballs when the word “weblog” is mentioned. After all, most media coverage to date has focused on weblogs (a.k.a. “blogs”) as public diaries — idiosyncratic, personal, and not especially [...]

Some recently proposed legislation could open up computer networks to vigilante-style justice. There’s never been a better time to be a hacker. Twice last week, Bush administration officials reached out to the hacker community, asking attendees at two different Las Vegas conferences to be responsible citizens and report any vulnerabilities they discover to both software [...]

Mention directory servers to the average person and you’ll get either a blank stare or a knowing look and a yawn. That’s because these servers, which manage lists of users on a computer network, play a decidedly prosaic role within corporate information systems. But as we enter the increasingly interconnected world of Web services, directory [...]