Peter Coffee

I just ran across my charts from a talk that I gave in 1995 with the title “Futures of Computing.” I was struck by the differences between the 10-year forecasts that I made then and the capabilities (and price/performance ratios) that are actually available now. In my talk, I started with two data points for […]

The proliferation of parallel processing hardware is creating a fast-growing need for multithreading skills. A developer who cant write safe and efficient concurrent code may waste up to half the power of the dual-core CPUs already found in laptop PCs and up to three-quarters of the power of the quad-core CPUs that Intel announced it […]

The paradox of programmers tools is aptly captured by a passage from Neal Stephensons 1992 novel, Snow Crash, in a scene where a hacker is stranded on a life raft in the middle of the Pacific Ocean — and thanks to the miracle of laptop computing, is hacking nonetheless. ““When hackers are hacking, they dont […]

The cracking of the German Enigma cryptosystem has inspired a host of books, including and sometimes combining both history and fiction. Its a compelling tale for technical professionals because that World War II effort required a combination of both brilliant people and breakthroughs in computational hardware. After seeing this past summer the Michael Apted movie […]

Continued controversy over U.S. military spending makes it a useful allegory of issues that arise in allocating IT resources. In the same way that defense planners find billions for high-tech systems but fall short in simple tasks like armoring soldiers, IT planners may be constructing vast new server farms that offer up key intellectual property […]

The impending demotion of Hewlett-Packard board chair Patricia Dunn, wholl step down from that post in January (although shell remain on the board), ought to trigger at least three separate conversations about the roles and mechanisms of information security in the enterprise and in any other organization that handles sensitive data. First, Dunn got in […]

In last weeks column, I started to build a bridge between the things that are working in online retail today and the changes that Id like to see tomorrow. This week, Id like to finish the thought. Last weeks column challenged online sellers to build the kind of site that they most fear. The site […]

At the time that Intel chose to explore the path that led to Itanium, the popular but complex x86 architecture was looking to many chip designers like a technical dead end. As things turned out, the admittedly twisty road to a 64-bit x86 was smoother and faster than it initially appeared, and it certainly led […]

With its confirmation early in September of new zero-day exploits aimed at users of Word 2000, Microsoft gave fresh impetus to enterprise evaluation of alternatives to the companys Office applications. Microsoft had already spurred buyers to think about their options with the radical user interface redesign of the forthcoming Office 2007. When eWeek Labs looked […]

Im now in the process of reviewing Parasofts Jtest 8.0, released today as the latest update to a Java code testing tool that Ive tracked now through several versions. Notable improvements in Version 8 include the addition of new capability to trace code behavior through complex applications, as well as integration of code review processes […]

Risks due to software monoculture were accurately identified in 2003, when computer security pioneer Dan Geer and his co-authors issued their controversial report on the risks of pervasive deployment of Windows. Theres more than one kind of monoculture, though, and the prevalence of any single operating system—insecure or otherwise—may be the least dangerous kind. In […]

Few products retain a coherent vision and a top-flight technical team long enough to celebrate a Version 10 release; even then, its a dubious achievement if it entails excessive feature creep or over-specialization. Click here to read the full review of SQL Anywhere 10. 2 Few products retain a coherent vision and a top-flight technical […]