Sean Michael Kerner

Gentoo Linux has released its first update of 2006, continuing the evolution of the meta-distribution, adding new software versions and improving support for PowerPC architectures. It also offers what Gentoo developers are claiming to be the first distribution with compile time optimization for the POWER5 processor. That support comes partially thanks to an IBM donation […]

As more and more workers access critical data remotely, the need for secure remote access is growing apace. Federal agencies are certainly not exceptions to the rule. Thanks (initially at least) to Juniper Networks, federal agencies can now choose SSL-VPN -based remote access technology in addition to IPsec -based solutions for secure remote database access. […]

Yahoo is expanding its support for PHP, with the launch this week of the PHP Developer Center as part of the Yahoo Developer Network. PHP and Yahoo are certainly not strangers. Rasmus Lehrdorf, the original creator of PHP, is actually a Yahoo employee after all. The new PHP Developer Center on the Yahoo Developer Network […]

MySQL will announce next week that is has acquired Web application technology firm Netfrastructure. Financial terms of the deal have not yet been disclosed. Netfrastructure’s founder Jim Starkey will serve as MySQL’s senior software architect, though exact details of what his position entails have not yet been disclosed. Starkey is considered a relational database pioneer. […]

The future of the Internet quite literally hangs in the air. ICANN board members met this week about the revised deal with VeriSign for control of the .com registry. The revised deal would end all pending litigation between ICANN and VeriSign, as well as allow VeriSign to raise domain prices and continue to manage the […]

For a typical Windows user, seeing a US-CERT advisory for an OS flaw is not a rare experience. Welcome to the party, Mac users. US-CERT has issued a Cyber Security Alert for you now, too. US-CERT Cyber Security Alert SA06-053A follows the center’s vulnerability note, which addressed the recently discovered Mac OS X Safari Command […]

The question of whether proprietary closed source code is present inside open source code is a huge issue. It sits at the crux of the SCO battle against Linux and it is also at the center of another controversy surrounding an open source effort to create a free clone of Microsoft’s Windows operating system. ReactOS […]

A new DHCP client for Linux is set to take advantage of an expected new feature in a future Linux kernel. The new DHCP client is being proposed by kernel developer Stefan Rompf and will (when completed) automatically recognize when a Linux user has disconnected from a particular DHCP server and look for a new […]

AOL and WebEx are combining their collective talents and tools for a new enterprise on demand IM offering code named AIM Pro. AIM Pro builds on AOL’s recently released Triton instant messaging client. Brian Curry, vice president, premium and subscription services at AOL explained that AOL provided WebEx with the core Triton SDK which is […]

Apple Mac OS X users may be at risk from an “extremely critical” vulnerability that remains unpatched. The apparent zero-day exploit comes as OS X users on the heels of recent reports that’s Apple Mac users are now being targeted by worm writers. Danish security firm Secunia has rated the new flaw “extremely critical.” The […]

The next generation of enterprise Java is (almost) here. Sun Microsystems today is set to release a preview version of its highly anticipated successor to J2EE, called Java EE, as well as previews of its Glassfish-based Java Application Server and a new version of NetBeans. Ken Drachnik, group product marketing manager of application platforms at […]

At the heart of every enterprise’s connection to the Internet is a router. It’s one of the most fundamental components of networking technologies, and the market is still growing, at least in terms of unit shipments. According to Infonetics Research, the global enterprise market shipped 14 percent more routers in 2005 than 2004. Despite that […]