Sean Michael Kerner

Microsoft’s march toward Linux interoperability is taking a leap forward this morning with the release of 20,000 lines of code under the GPLv2 open source license. The code release includes a trio of Linux drivers designed to help Linux operating systems better run as guests on Microsoft’s Windows Server 2008 through its Hyper-V virtualization technology. […]

For users, the browser is their primary interface to the Web, and browser vendors put a great deal of time and effort into making theirs ever speedier. But when a site is slow or doesn’t perform as it should, is it always the browser’s fault? Not necessarily. There are a number of links in the […]

From the ‘who can you trust‘ files: The Symbian mobile OS is used by millions of phones globally and thanks to a (now corrected) oversight they could have potentially installed malware – with Symbian’s approval. Symbian has a program called Symbian Signed – which digitally signs applications that meet the approval of Symbian. That system was […]

From the ‘ten years later‘ files: When Red Hat had its IPO in 1999, many (myself included) saw it as the real coming of age of Linux. While there is little doubt that IPO was a big event for Red Hat and Linux, perhaps an even more important one from a milestone point of view […]

From the ‘didn’t they just patch?‘ files: Mozilla just patched their Firefox 3.5.x browser last week – but security researchers are already claiming there is yet another security flaw. Researcher Simon Berry-Byrne – the same researcher that first posted the JavaScript exploit that was the key security fix in Firefox 3.5.1 – has posted proof […]

From the ‘standards don’t happen overnight’ files: I’ve been writing about Energy Efficient Ethernet for over a year now, as the effort to make Ethernet more green, winds its way through the standards bodies. This week the effort hit a standards milestone with the approval of a draft of the IEEE P802.3az Energy-Efficient Ethernet standard. […]

From the ‘what’s running on your network?‘ files When it comes to network scanning, Nmap is a critical open source tool that many (myself included) have relied on for years. This week the biggest update since 1997 is out in the form of Nmap 5.0. Nmap is a great first step in trying to enumerate […]

Mozilla’s Firefox 3.5.1 browser is now out with fixes for one critical zero-day vulnerability that first became public earlier this week. The zero-day flaw is a vulnerability in Firefox 3.5’s Just-in-Time (JIT) JavaScript compiler. Mozilla’s security advisory describes the vulnerability as “an exploitable memory corruption problem.” Security researcher Simon Berry-Byrne publicly posted proof-of-concept exploit code […]

From the ‘economy isn’t yet in recovery‘ files: Back in February, Cisco CEO John Chambers said he was optimistic that Cisco could emerge from the recession without major layoffs. That doesn’t mean Cisco isn’t restructuring and reducing staff – which is happening this week. I contacted Cisco today to find out what was going on […]

The race toward 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100 GbE) continues accelerating, with networking vendor Alcatel-Lucent laying the groundwork for equipping its offerings with the technology. 100 GbE is an emerging standard for high-speed data transport that, when finalized, will be the fastest Ethernet link speed available — and well ahead of the current fastest speed, 10 […]

From the ‘patent threats‘ files: Linux users take note: Microsoft has signed another patent licensing agreement with a Linux using vendor. In this new case, Microsoft has signed a deal with Melco Group the group that owns tech vendor Buffalo Technology. The deal specifically deals with Buffalo’s NAS (network attached storage) devices as well as […]