Sean Michael Kerner

Last week, HP (NYSE: HPQ) held a hacking challenge to test participants’ security abilities. The challenge had both an internal HP and a public online component, with the purpose of teaching people about security by putting them through a series of challenges. Those challenges were based on real-world login examples, with participants trying to figure […]

From the “ActiveX Look-alike‘ files: Google is now out with Chrome dev-channel version 4.0.220.1 which is notable for one primary reason — Native Client. The 4.0.220.1 version is the first Chrome release to include Native Client as a built-in client for Windows. Native Client is a technology that will enable the browser to run code […]

Cisco is now bringing its effort to create a unified fabric for regular LAN and storage SAN traffic to blade servers. The basic idea is to reduce the number of switches that a blade server requires in order to access both data and storage networks. The new Nexus 4000 switch is an expansion of Cisco’s […]

Until now, most users of the open source Hadoop data storage and processing platform have relied on a command-line interface to manage their application. That changes today with the initial release of the Cloudera Desktop, which provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for Hadoop. Cloudera is one of the lead commercial backers behind Hadoop, and […]

From the ‘They Did What?!‘ files: If you happen to believe that Microsoft could never open source one of its operating systems, think again. No it’s not Windows (but hey try ReactOS, it’s not bad). A Microsoft Research backed operating system called Barrelfish is now available under an open source BSD license. Barrelfish is a […]

The U.S. government no longer holds ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) on a tight leash, and that’s a good thing according to many in the Internet industry. Yesterday, ICANN announced a landmark deal, officially called the Affirmation of Commitments, that will see oversight move from the Commerce Department to a multi-national model. […]

From the ‘Cute and Cuddly‘  files: Not far now… The “Karmic Koala”  aka Ubuntu 9.10 Desktop Beta, Server and Netbook editions,and the Ubuntu Netbook Remix are now available. The final release is now only a few weeks away and the Beta is a major milestone. I’d expect to see a whole lot more users try […]

From the ‘More Work For Web Developers‘ files: In June of this year, Mozilla announced a new security effort called Content Security Policy (CSP) to help prevent Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. Now here we are three months later and the first previews of CSP are now available. The basic idea with CSP is that […]

From the ‘How Many Open Source Groups Do We Need?‘ files: Back in February of 2007, I wrote about a new open source group called the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) that was just getting started. Over the last two and a half years, I’ve followed up with them a couple of times to make sure […]

Cisco is making an all-cash offer of $3 billion to acquire video communication vendor Tandberg in a deal that aims to rev up its video collaboration business. The deal, expected to close in the first half of 2010, will help Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) expand its TelePresence video collaboration technology footprint, which targets customers ranging from […]

From the ‘We Know Better Now‘ files: The U.S National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) is now out with a draft of a 236 page report on smart grid security. Is the smart grid – the effort to modernize and connect the global energy delivery system – that vulnerable? In my view, that question […]