Sean Michael Kerner

Developing applications for multiple mobile devices is not an easy task, due to the significant differences between platforms and their respective software libraries. The Pulsar effort announced today by the open source Eclipse Foundation could address that problem. Pulsar is an attempt to provide a common platform that will enable developers to produce applications for […]

From the ‘human error‘ files: Everyone loves a good conspiracy (myself included) – which is what led to a wildfire of speculation today about Symantec trying to download alleged malware onto users PC’s, with a file called pifts.exe.To add further fuel to the fire Symantec deleted posts in its user forum related to the pifts.exe […]

Users of Microsoft Windows Domain Name Server — update your servers now. Microsoft has issued its monthly Patch Tuesday update and Windows DNS top the list with four vulnerabilities that the company warns are likely to be exploited. In all, Microsoft addresses six vulnerabilities in its March Patch Tuesday update, spread across only three Microsoft […]

From the ‘time to apply‘ files: It’s Summer! No it’s not (but hey we can dream..) — It is time though for another round of Google’s Summer of Code (SoC). The SoC is an effort that first started in 2005 as an effort to get students involved in open source code development.  Google provides a […]

Linux-based networking vendor Vyatta is out today with its Vyatta Community Edition 5 (VC5) release, including a host of new security and performance improvements. Vyatta has been offering an open source alternative to proprietary networking gear since 2006, and with the new release is aiming to expand its share. The new Vyatta release comes as […]

For a time, Network Access Control (NAC) was all the rage in the enterprise networking world, offering the promise of security by validating users when they attempted to access the network. But admission-based security control doesn’t keep an eye on users after they gain access to the network. That’s where the Interface for Metadata Access […]

From the ‘that’s good coin‘ files: A new report from Infonetics Research has pegged the value of the WAN optimization market in 2008 to be worth over $1 billion. That’s a new milestone for the market and in my opinion clearly shows that demand for WAN optimization is real. “In 2008, the WAN optimization appliance […]

While Linux is widely used in servers and is growing slowly on the desktop side, the embedded market for Linux is one that continues to have momentum. One such proof point for came this week from the year end financial results for embedded operating system vendor Wind River (NASDAQ:WIND). For its fiscal 2009 year, which […]

For the past 25 years, HP has been rolling out its HP-UX Unix operating system on a regular basis to support mission-critical operations. That’s going to continue with the company’s upcoming update to HP-UX. The release, codenamed “Vigilance” and officially referred to as HP-UX 11i v3 Update 4, will offer improved virtualization capabilities and performance, […]

From the ‘how secure do you want to be‘ files: Extended Validation SSL (EV-SSL) certificates recently turned two , and seem to be growing in adoption with over 11,000 sites. EV provides additional audit and verification to ensure that a site is authentic. A critical part of  the EV-SSL ecosystem are the browser vendors and […]