Sean Michael Kerner

Check Point is now offering its software blade portfolio of network security appliances for the Amazon Cloud (AWS). The software blade offerings include IPS, Firewall and filtering capabilities. “What we’re doing is bringing all the core security technologies that we’ve had for years and now we’re able to deliver it on the Amazon cloud,” Fred […]

Oracle is out with its first major open source IDE release of the year, updating NetBeans to version 7.1 The new NetBeans release builds on the Java SE 7 support first introduced in NetBeans 7.0 in April 2011. A key focus of the NetBeans 7.1 release is enhanced support for developers building user interfaces with […]

Among the major enhancements in the 3.2 kernel is a pair of improvements to two Linux filesystems. The Ext4 filesystem is getting a boost that will see filesystem blocks grow to up to 1 MB in size up from the traditional 4 KB. “This adds supports for bigalloc file systems,” Linux kernel developer Ted Ts’o […]

From the ‘Linux on the iPhone/iPad’ files: Canonical has finally landed Linux on Apple’s iOS kinda/sorta. A new Ubuntu Files app officially debuted in the AppStore today. This goes beyond the Ubuntu One Music app that has been available since last year providing Ubuntu One users with the ability to store and move files. […]

In the world of Big Data, Hadoop is the big thing. Yet even though Hadoop has become the defining application of the Big Data world, until today it had not officially attained 1.0 status. The Apache Software Foundation today officially announced the release of Hadoop 1.0, marking a significant milestone for the stability of the […]

Back in October of 2010, networking vendor Cisco Systems (NASDAQ:CSCO) announced a new home telepresence device called the Umi. The Umi was intended to be Cisco entry into a new market, the home telepresence business. With Umi telepresence, the original goal was to bring high-quality video conference to the home. It’s a goal that now […]

The networking industry in general has been undergoing a period of transition in 2011, with even more likely to come in 2012 but 2011 was still a good year for HP’s Networking division and the outlook for 2012 is even brighter. HP Networking has been undergoing a period of transition in recent years. HP acquired […]

From the ‘License Renewal’ files: The Mozilla Public License is one of the most influential software licenses in recent memory. In many respects, it is the basis for alot of modern idea about open source, as opposed to just Free Software and the GPL. This week, the Mozilla Public License 2.0 was officially released – […]

From the ‘We Can All Get Along’ files: One of the more surprising Linux controversies of 2010 (for me at least) was the removal of the Android drivers from the mainline of Linux. The 2.6.33 kernel released in February of 2010, dropped Android and it has not been part of the mainline of Linux ever […]

From the ‘Free as in Freedom’ files: One of controversies that re-emerged (if it in fact had ever actually sub-merged) in 2011, is the relevance of Richard Stallman (RMS), the Father of Free Software. RMS was the key spark that ignited the fantastic world of FOSS that we enjoy today, he is the man behind […]

From the ‘Patent FUD’ files: In the early days of Linux the anti-Microsoft controversies and conspiracies were everywhere. In recent years, Microsoft has come to an accommodation of sorts with open source and Linux. Though the deals that they have made – that accommodation – continued to be a source of significant controversy in 2011. […]

From the ‘Top Controversies of 2011’ files: The decline of Ubuntu and the corresponding rise of Linux Mint is one of the bigger Linux controversies of 2011. Ubuntu’s introduction of Unity alienated a non-trivial portion of the Ubuntu user-base which then went looking for a new home – and found it in Linux Mint.  How […]