Peter Coffee

The most powerful synergy in Microsoft Corp.s technology portfolio is between its powerful platform services and its reasonably priced, highly capable tools. Wooing developers with seductive ease of use, Microsofts tools then pave a path of least resistance toward the adoption of each new wave of Windows features. Visual Studio .Net 2003, slated for release […]

My April 28th letter made reference to a fascinating study of network reliability, specifically the trade-off between tolerance of accidents and resistance to deliberate attacks. The referenced PDF file, for no known reason, became corrupted at just about the time that the letter went out: Im pleased to report that the administrator of the site […]

“Patch management is, by far, the biggest problem” in keeping systems secure, declared Microsoft Strategic Technology Director Brett Arsenault at the IT security conference hosted this week in Boise by Washington Group International. “Its not just our issue,” he continued, claiming that security patch activity on competing operating systems is twice as great, “but we […]

The Wizard of Oz is a parable of computer and network security, said Ira Winkler, chief security strategist of Hewlett-Packard Co., at the conference on IT security hosted this week by Washington Group International in Boise, Idaho. “The moral of the story only seems to be, Theres no place like home,” said Winkler, who delighted […]

Application developers know that Microsoft never puts out a platform without offering a matching set of tools. What Visual Basic 1.0 did for the Windows GUI, last years Visual Studio .Net did for network-based applications. That trend continues with Visual Studio .Net 2003, which can reasonably claim to offer developers a single portal to crafting […]

If I asked you to name the internets dominant operating system, youd probably nominate Linux, Windows or possibly Solaris. My answer would be none of the above. Increasingly, our most value-adding interface layer is Google—and our industrys annals of operating system wars and browser wars are looking ever more like ancient history. It might seem […]

Coming to market today after months of early-adopter testing, Preventsys 1.0 is a network auditing system whose specifications seem like an echo of eWEEK Labs security process recommendations during the past several years. I hope to be talking soon with some of the companys customers, but I found early drafts of the companys forthcoming technical […]

Youve seen the TV auto ads that warn, “Professional driver, closed course. Do not attempt.” They remind me of microprocessor companies dueling over which has the fastest chip. The benchmarks they cite recall the empty city streets, deserted mountain roads and other venues beloved of ad directors but rarely encountered in day-to-day driving. Perhaps “do […]

Its not an easy time to be Intel Corp. or Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The launch of AMDs Opteron emphasizes the difference between their technology strategies, but the companies are just placing different bets in the same casino. Both companies hope that the mass-market economics of high-volume processor production will draw resource-limited server manufacturers—and cost-conscious […]

In remarks at the launch of Windows Server 2003, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer enthused that the companys new product “is secure by default, with 60 percent less attack surface area by default compared to Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 3.” What? Its obvious that this number is meant to suggest a smaller chance of a […]

Its not an easy time to be either Intel or AMD. The launch of puts the spotlight on the almost trivial difference between their strategies, but the companies are really just placing different bets in the same casino of complex and costly designs. Its a gaming hall that both of these chip makers were forced […]

The fax that I found in my machines output tray included all the details needed to confirm the credit card transaction: name, address, card number and expiration date. The only problem was that none of that information was any of my business. It turned out that a vendors sales representative had accidentally combined the first […]