Peter Coffee

There are detailed guidelines that developers can follow to assure their compatibility with Microsofts forthcoming Windows Vista. Many of those instructions can usefully be condensed to one simple statement: This operating system is large and in charge. PC programmers have spent two decades developing bad habits along with their clever applications. The PCs first decade […]

An application developer might think of process leverage as something that comes from chaining applications together, with output from one becoming input to another. A business process analyst might think of improving productivity by facilitating document flow, minimizing the number of times that information has to be transferred from one document to another. Neither view […]

Its no longer possible to point at a rack of hardware—or even point at the door of a server room—and say, “My application runs in there.” Distributed systems may rely on multiple data centers, supply chain partners and third-party service providers to create and maintain key elements of an application or its performance-improving infrastructure. It […]

I know its been two weeks now, but Im still getting used to seeing a Hewlett-Packard logo when I surf to www.mercury.com. It appears that HP has better taste in making strategic acquisitions than it does in hiring contractors. There may be doubt about whos in charge of HPs in-house inquiries, but theres none about […]

Our colleagues at Baseline released in November a survey of R&D spending by 20 tech leaders. Looking at their average “R&D tax” of 8 percent of sales, I found myself thinking about the shopping list that I would write if those budgets were mine to command. If I had to allocate Microsofts $6.6 billion idea […]

The Processor Forum used to be my favorite conference every year, because I was sure that the ingenuity of processor developers was defining the instruction set environments in which wed spend our time crafting code in the years to come. A briefing on developments in the Alpha or the Itanium or the Power processor family […]

In the last week or so, Ive seen as much wireless handheld Web surfing by parents at Boy Scout meetings and by family members in hospital lobbies as I have by road warriors in airport lounges. Its one thing to see the statistics of proliferating smart phones, especially those from overseas markets (where they havent […]

Archiving the entire Internet—not just as it is but as it has been—is a task that pushes the limits of maximum storage volume while demanding a creative search for minimum cost. Brewster Kahle, digital librarian and founder of the nonprofit Internet Archive, spoke with eWEEK Technology Editor Peter Coffee about the magnitude of the challenge […]

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Is it good news or bad news when nontechnical management gets enthused about a software development meme such as agile development methods? Yes. As in, it is both. Management support brings increased access to training, notoriously neglected in the building and maintenance of enterprise development teams. When I Google the three words, “software developer training” […]

Not that Id know, but Im told that having too much portable wealth can lead to unwelcome government attention. In Neal Stephensons 1999 novel “Cryptonomicon,” several hackers advise a business associate with an inconvenient stash of gold to exchange it for digital cash. “Anonymous. Untraceable. And untaxable,” they tell him. “Whatll that buy me?” the […]

Im tempted to take the phone off the hook and send a regretful email to my editors, telling them not to expect any attention from me for a day or two or three—because my week is being kicked off with the release of NetBeans 5.5, and Id really like to take it out for a […]