John Taschek

It shouldnt take troubling times to put security at the top of everyones mind. Security is supposed to be thought of as a long-term process, not a series of reactions to specific events that eventually lead to a contraction of interest and an increase in laxness. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks may change this and […]

Two powerful companies locked in a seemingly tiny skirmish may knock the bottom out of the NAS industry, and theres nothing we can do about it. It all started with Microsofts SMB (Server Message Block), a file system that Microsoft spearheaded to enable the propagation of Windows into Unix shops. It worked spectacularly, and Windows […]

Almost every year, the same myopic visionaries pop out of the woodwork to announce that processors dont need to be faster. Theyre probably of the same genetic ilk as those who thought rail transportation exceeding the 10-mph theoretical “human speed limit” would threaten our health. Some of these confused souls attempt to draw parallels between […]

Light breaks on what I think will be a typical first day of a computer conference—NetWorld+Interop in Atlanta, to be exact. After eating breakfast, I head back to my hotel room and flip on the television. One of the towers of the World Trade Center is burning. A plane hits the second tower, a scene […]

As Sun and Microsoft duke it out over which is the supreme leader in Web development, their hubris has become comical, as if the vendors were political contenders who have succumbed to the sins of negative ads. Theyve done nothing but cloud the definition of what Web services really are. Sun charges that Microsofts .Net […]

Microsoft is fighting feverishly to prove that Windows XP is more than just another operating system. The fight includes a huge marketing blitz and apparently some grass-roots letters from dead people urging at least one attorney general interested in suing Microsoft to go easy on the company (www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-000068380aug23.story). But Microsofts real fight began soon after […]

Somethings got to shake out with Java 2 Enterprise Edition. It seems everyone is moving toward the sun-drenched J2EE standard for enterprise computing. Its already generated feverish interest with tool developers and applications companies alike. The downside is that the standard itself has already helped to decimate the application server market, leaving behind just a […]

When I last wrote about Oracle, I was a bit confused about why the companys code name for Oracle9i was the “last database.” Im no more clear on the subject, but I do have some insight on where Oracle is heading with its next database. The buzz term around Oracle now is “total cost of […]

So the PC is 20 years old now, although of course nothing from Sinclair, Tandy, Commodore, Altair or Apple figures in anyones counts. MTV has also hit the score mark, and, like the PC industry, the music industry is awash in commercialism and uncertainty. But, oh, how the PC and MTV have changed us to […]

Is Intels PIII-M processor too powerful? Until now, it looked like a smooth evolution from Intels PIII technology to the P4. Intel had publicly announced that the PIII technology would stop at 1.13GHz, giving the P4 some nice running room to get up to 2GHz by the end of the year. Then, on July 29, […]

Its not the best time to promote outsourcing labor to foreign countries, but all cost-cutting, efficiency-inducing measures are looking awfully good right now, I bet. Of course, to those Americans who are out of work and to those who think H1-B visas have robbed Americans of jobs, the idea stinks. They shouldnt worry, though, because […]

Last week, I wrote about the continued consolidation of the application server market as if there were any players left to consolidate. As those players have beaten each other to a pulp and become application companies, its interesting to peer into Microsofts view of the world. After all, Microsoft claims to have developed the first […]