Peter Coffee

With my 25th college reunion approaching this summer, theres a sense of having come full circle. My goal as a Carter-era undergraduate was to take on the problem of energy; now, a quarter-century later, more than 500 IEEE Fellows rank “energy development” at the head of their lists of problems demanding technology input during the […]

As the U.S. government nears opening day for the Homeland Security Department, IT buyers and users may wonder how the landscape of computer and network security will be changed by the governments actions—as well as by continuing development of attackers methods and security vendors innovations. The previously separate worlds of public safety and foreign intelligence […]

Unlike information technology domains in which anything between book covers is suspected of being obsolete, security is a discipline in which seasoned experience still has value. Three titles released this year offer different approaches to meet different needs. “Security in Computing” Charles and Shari Pfleeger; Prentice Hall PTR; $79 Now in its third edition, “Security […]

At a dinner meeting last week, someone asked me what I was going to do about “Intels outrageous sales pitch” for Itanium versus “proprietary Unix systems.” I havent since found an example of Intel actually using that phrase, although I did find Microsoft VP Cliff Reeves calling Windows/Itanium “a nail in the coffin of high-end […]

My e-mail newsletter ended last year with a look at the progress of Microsofts C# .Net language. One reader then asked why Microsofts forthcoming enhancements to that language werent part of the first release. He wondered, “Why do we have to keep reinventing these wheels?” Certainly, the family tree of the proposed C# improvements seems […]

Its easier to chronicle the past than keep track of the present, let alone anticipate the future. Its therefore no surprise that the end of 2002 saw a spate of articles crowing about the 20th anniversary of the Internet, as defined by the cutover from the ARPAnets original NCP to the modern combination of the […]

When a retailer sells a gift certificate, the buyer (that is, the gift giver) makes that vendor an interest-free loan and often recruits a new customer as well. These supply-side benefits travel well into the world of e-business. As Jay Leno said last month, “Why spoil the impersonal feel of a gift certificate by actually […]

Its time to say goodbye. As of March 12, IBM will cease to offer the OS/2 Operating System. The tea leaves have been there to read since the middle of last year, when IBMs “OS/2 Strategy for 2002” document contained a key piece of advice under its fourth subhead, “What are IBMs recommendations?” Three sentences […]

NASA and NORAD, the space folks and the air defense folks, respectively, pretended (I think) to have a bit of a turf war during Christmas week. After years of issuing an annual press release concerning its tracking of Santas round-the-world flight, NORAD bristled at the news that NASA now proposes doing the same. “Tracking Santa […]

Its been argued that the leading edge of processor power has gotten too far ahead of the usability curve of enterprise software; that tomorrows most powerful machines will therefore be greeted with indifference, rather than being hailed as much-needed solutions to pressing problems. As much as I agree with this view of most desktop and […]