Sean Michael Kerner

From the ‘so now they’re a family?‘ files: Apparently Conficker isn’t the only worm out there trying to exploit the flaw Microsoft patched in October. A worm called – Neeris – is out taking advantage of the same Conficker flaw, and perhaps more interestingly, its creators have learned a few things from Conficker too. “Neeris […]

From the ‘beastie vs. tux‘ files: The first Beta for FreeBSD 7.2 has been released, updating network drivers as well as some threading libraries.  The FreeBSD 7.2 release is the first point upgrade since the 7.1 release which became generally available in January of this year. The final release of FreeBSD 7.2 is currently scheduled […]

Business intelligence (BI) has traditionally meant on-site deployment and direct connections to data warehouse technologies. Things are changing, though with the release of Jaspersoft BI Suite 3.5, which will enable users to run their analysis without the need to always have a data warehouse or even a local on-premises installation. Jaspersoft’s open source BI competitor […]

From the ‘weren’t they just working on 3.1?‘ files: Firefox 3.5 is not yet out the door, but Mozilla has already started the planning for Firefox 3.6, codenamed ‘Namoroka’. The new browser is named after a national park in Madagascar. So far, Mozilla has outlined a number of key goals for Firefox 3.6 with the […]

From the ‘yeah they do open source‘ files: Microsoft is best known as a vendor of proprietary code and applications (like Windows), but it’s important to remember that since 2007, Microsoft has had its own OSI approved open source licenses. Late yesterday, Microsoft announced that it was open sourcing its ASP.NET MVC (model view controller) […]

Ubuntu founder Mark ShuttleworthSource: Canonical Microsoft might be betting big on Windows 7, the next version of its flagship operating system, but to Ubuntu Linux founder Mark Shuttleworth, the upcoming release is really an opportunity for Linux to shine. Granted, Linux on the desktop has not made as much of a dent against Windows as it […]

From the ‘it’s all about user experience‘ files: Open source web meeting and collaboration vendor dimdim is out with version 5 of their platform today. The key new enhancements are webinar widgets and improved screen sharing (screen casting). The webinar widgets are an interesting idea. The basic idea is that the webinar widgets are a […]

Conficker — the malicious worm expected to activate today — did not cause widespread computer meltdowns around the globe. But considering that Microsoft patched the flaw five months ago, it’s not clear why Conficker ever became a concern to begin with. So why was it an issue — and will it be an issue again? […]

eBay is a marketplace for buyers, sellers and … developers? Today, the online auction giant officially launched its eBay Selling Manager Applications beta, which aims to entice developers to put their tools in front of the company’s legions of merchants. The eBay Selling Manager provides tools to help sellers manage their listings on the site. […]

From the ‘going mobile‘ files: I’ve been writing about Intel’s Moblin since 2007. The basic idea is that it’s a mobile Linux distribution as well as a community for mobile Linux developers. For Intel, it is a key effort as it works hand in hand with their Atom CPUs. Now after two years of going […]