Peter Coffee

To exploit emerging Java-based technologies, developers enjoy an expanding arsenal of tools that increasingly rest on one of two open-source foundations: Eclipse and NetBeans. This years JavaOne conference in San Francisco marked significant advances for both of these developer offerings, and eWEEK Labs found proponents of both efforts in surprising agreement that their work is […]

When youre new to a city and havent yet figured out the good places to go, you need a car. Its a complex piece of equipment, and driving exposes you to substantial risks, but you want that flexibility to go anywhere and carry anything. After a while, though, you know the places youll want to […]

At the apogee of software challenges are the rigorous demands of robotic deep-space missions. NASAs July 4 success in hitting a bullet with a bullet—specifically, hitting a comet nucleus with a probe about the size of a coffee table at a relative speed of 23,000 mph—updates the archive of these high-profile tests. Ironically, such missions […]

Maple 10, from the MapleSoft division of Waterloo Maple Inc., strengthens a highly regarded mathematical workbench with unique facilities for building presentation documents that clarify intimidating symbols and formulas. Producers, as well as consumers, of Maple documents will benefit from major ease-of-use enhancements in this release. Click here to read the full review of Maple […]

Mathematical topics that used to be considered higher math are increasingly in the mainstream of an enterprise IT administrators concerns. Near the top of any modern-day IT pros to-do list might be information security, network capacity planning and supply chain optimization projects. Taking a broader view, the list might expand to include financial asset allocation […]

A hardware manifestation of a software bug, for example the Pentium FDIV error of 1994, is so rare that people can still remember that specific incident more than 10 years ago. In contrast, imagine saying “that Windows bug in 1994” (or, for that matter, “that Unix bug in 1994”) and having anyone know exactly what […]

eWEEK Labs recently sat down with members of the eWEEK Corporate Partner Advisory Board to get their take on what the job of an IT professional will be like five years from now. Despite their roles as early adopters of IT innovations, the Corporate Partners are guarded in their attempts to foresee the world of […]

My irony alarm started clanging when I read the late-June headline, “Solar sail official blames rockets.” Isnt that always the way? You have a really cool new idea, but when you try it out, the parts of the project that you supposedly already knew how to do are the ones that make you (in this […]

If its not what you do for a living, its something you should think about paying someone else to do. Configuring, maintaining and updating a development teams life-cycle management tool set seems like an excellent example, and Rally Software Development Corp.s forthcoming Rally Release 5 looks like an attractive option for improved process quality — […]

There are two ways to mount a successful software initiative. The first is to identify a costly problem and solve it with an easily deployed tool that users will quickly recognize and value. The second is to identify and solve the problems that are shared by people who are trying to succeed the first way. […]

As this weeks tenth annual JavaOne conference kicks off in San Francisco, my schedule has never been so densely packed with show-floor appointments to be briefed on an impressive variety of technologies. Everything from Nokias mobile and handheld devices to GigaSpaces Technologies enterprise-scale virtual server infrastructures is going to be represented in my conversations there, […]

Software developers used to be famous for their readiness to launch into language wars: protracted, passionate or even vicious debates on the power and elegance of various notations. The move toward service-oriented architecture should take the angry energy out of those arguments. I suspect that language wars used to start for reasons described by storyteller […]