http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/featured-timestamp.html Tech support, programming, web development, and internet marketing community. Forums to get free computer help and support. http://www.daniweb.com/forums/dani-images/misc/dani/logo.gif http://www.daniweb.com http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3322.html I've had several people ask me what I think the best, top, most user friendly, ultimate, and so on distribution is--so now I'm publishing my Top 10 Linux Distributions in reverse order of preference. Ease of installation, commercial support, community support, updates, administrative tools, stability, performance, and to a lesser extent--their ranking on DistroWatch.com. 10. SuSE (SLED, OpenSuSE, etc.) - This bottom spot belongs to Novell's Linux offerings mostly due to the commercial version's lackluster performance and overall updatedness (if that's a word). SuSE Linux seems to be a bit... IT Water Cooler Sat, 11 Oct 2008 11:47:32 CDT khess http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3322.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3321.html According to Russian forensic security experts and 'password recovery' specialists ElcomSoft, the days of protecting documents and files with 40-bit encryption are now officially over. It has now released a product which uses Thunder Tables technology to unlock password-protected documents that have been created using Microsoft Word. In fact, it guarantees that it can provide "near-instant recovery" of any such documents protected with 40-bit encryption. That compares with the days it would have taken using a straightforward brute-force approach. Apparently the secret is the Thunder Tables... Software Development Sat, 11 Oct 2008 07:00:21 CDT newsguy http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3321.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3320.html At the end of trading today (Friday) it looks like the stock market won't end up in positive territory, but it will come close - an event every trader and investor on the planet planet will take in a Wall Street minute. No rhyme or reason why, it just seems that the market is finally ready to capitulate after eight straight days of mega-losses that wiped out over $2 trillion in portfolio assets in the U.S. alone. A point worth noting, markets always self-correct - in both directions. So eventually profit motives will be so strong that investors won't be able to resist the urge of buying... IT Water Cooler Fri, 10 Oct 2008 17:14:59 CDT Brian.oco http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3320.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3319.html Business intelligence (BI) software vendor Actuate announced plans recently to make BI data available to its customers right on their mobile phones. While most companies are scrambling to jump on the iPhone bandwagon, Actuate hasn't forgotten that plenty of businesspeople still use BlackBerrys and, yes, even Palm devices. Actuate has partnered with Webalo to deliver e.spreadsheet and BIRT data to mobile devices via the Webalo Mobile Dashboard. Actuate customers who previously have been able to only access data in-house can now use their BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Palm, Symbian, or any... IT Water Cooler Fri, 10 Oct 2008 13:58:02 CDT Lisa Hoover http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3319.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3316.html Last Saturday, Republican vice presidential nominee and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin held a rally in Los Angeles in the Home Depot Center, and the California Democratic Party rented a giant electronic billboard during the event, and solicited questions from people, via texting, to display during the presentation (exhorting submitters to be family-friendly). You can see the results here. With today's flash mobs and almost-instantaneous ability to transmit information, at what point are there going to be limits put on the sorts of contacts that people can make with one another? At what point... Coffee House Thu, 09 Oct 2008 16:26:43 CDT slfisher http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3316.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3318.html Grasping, clawing, and scratching for a single slice, however thin, of good news out of the worst stock market week ever. Okay. IBM’ earnings were actually pretty good. Tech spending for software and services – what Big Blue does best – is holding up, and if there is a soft landing spot in the stock market – one that will give investors a nice bounce into the next rally – the software side of the technology sector could be it. One other piece of good news comes from utilities giant General Electric, whose third quarter earnings should also meet expectations – not a mean feat in... IT Water Cooler Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:55:33 CDT Brian.oco http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3318.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3317.html Rumors are flying this week ahead of Apple's big Mac Book event on Tuesday that it will announce the long rumored sub-$1000 notebook. In fact, my friends at The Unofficial Apple Weblog are reporting that someone has gotten their hands on a price sheet ahead of the announcement suggesting that there will be an $800 Mac Book. If it's true, and nothing is official yet--Apple tends to be tight-lipped about announcements, as you are no doubt aware--it comes at perfect time as consumers are hungry for lower prices. Apple Stock Price Nose-Diving You might have noticed that the stock market has... IT Water Cooler Fri, 10 Oct 2008 07:17:38 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3317.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3315.html Over the last week or so, I've been exploring cloud computing. My basic thesis through this series has been that as the economy sours--it's darn close to curdling--cloud computing gives you access to sophisticated applications without expensive hardware. Sounds like a smart play on the face of it, but when Richard Stallman, the Dean of the free software movement weighs in that it's actually stupid, it's going to make you stand up and take notice. So to get yet another view on all of this, I had a chat with Rishi Chandra, the product manager for Google Docs Enterprise. Perception Versus... IT Water Cooler Thu, 09 Oct 2008 10:31:17 CDT Techwriter10 http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3315.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3314.html Which hypervisor performs better, Xen or VMware's ESX? That apparently depends on which organization you ask. But for a team that's tasked with choosing a virtualization platform, some impartial data would sure be helpful. "That's where we come in," said Michael Salsburg, director of the Computer Measurement Group, a non-profit that acts as a repository for the performance data gathered by hundreds of member companies around the world. We spoke recently on the phone after a colleague told me about CMG. In “Xen vs. VMware – The Battle of Brands,” an article coincidentally written by... Software Development Thu, 09 Oct 2008 08:57:00 CDT EddieC http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3314.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3307.html Sometimes someone has something that's just a grand idea and everyone should have one. Take Google Goggles. The idea is that when you send an e-mail at certain times of day, particularly from home, they'll set you some maths questions. Why would it do a thing like that? Why, to stop you telling the boss what you really think of him after you've had a few beers. If you don't get the maths right, it assumes you're inebriated and won't send. Not a bad idea, you might think, and I've had some thoughts about some tweaks. For example, how about an eBay add-on? You want that Rolex, you must have... IT Water Cooler Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:35:54 CDT GuyClapperton http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3307.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3310.html It seems Apple may be on the brink of yet another iPhone redesign. Not, this time, because of any fault or because of any user demand but because the European Union (that's my continent, folks) is considering a directive that would force phones to have an easily removable battery. This, to me, is taking legislation too far. I can see a lot of arguments in its favour of course. You can replace batteries easily if it's redesigned, carry a spare around (using the location services demolishes battery life all too quickly I find, even after the firmware upgrade the other week), if it went wrong... IT Water Cooler Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:02:59 CDT GuyClapperton http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3310.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3311.html A coordinated effort by global central banks, led by the U.S. and the Federal Reserve Board’s 0.5% emergency rate cut today has more or less calmed the financial markets this morning (down about 100 points in mid-morning trading). I say “more or less’ because who really knows? But the economists I’m seeing and reading think that lower rates will get more people back into big ticket items like houses, cars and travel packages – a must for an economy that is being dragged down by frightened consumers. Plus, the rate cut relieves pressure on banks who either can’t or won’t find... IT Water Cooler Wed, 08 Oct 2008 11:47:22 CDT Brian.oco http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3311.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3306.html The stock market seem to be stabilizing, aided by news that the Federal Reserve will buy up short-term debt in order to get companies financially interacting again. I won't get into the gruesome details, but buying up short term debt (known as commercial paper on Wall Street - a mechanism that enables companies to borrow money overnight or or over the course of a few days) is an area that the Federal Reserve rarely gets into. Of course, these are historic times and the Fed will every tool in its arsenal to reverse the sliding economy. That's what we're seeing here - and it seems to be... IT Water Cooler Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:07:34 CDT Brian.oco http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3306.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3304.html Today the Mono Project released the much-anticipated Mono 2.0 for Linux. After two-and-a-half years in development, Mono 2.0 is finally here and ready to run your .NET 2.0 applications, Windows Forms, ASP.NET content on Mac OS X, BSD and Linux. Mono is multi-language capable--choose your own path from C#, VB, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby, Eiffel, F#, Oxygene and more. Mono is a cross-platform, open source .NET development framework. Now the question is, why? Why would anyone want to use .NET for anything if you're still using PHP, Python, Java, etc. for development? Mostly it's because Miguel... IT Water Cooler Mon, 06 Oct 2008 18:44:56 CDT khess http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3304.html http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3303.html The impact from the ongoing credit crisis is finally starting to translate into layoffs for the tech sector. The folks I'm talking to say that AT&T, Apple, Yahoo, Sun, eBay, Microsoft, Nortel, HP, EDS, and even Google are going to be passing around pink slips with alarming aggressiveness in weeks to come. Sun looks like its ready to layoff 2,500 employees, Yahoo up to 3,500, Apple about 1,500, and HP will slice off a whopping 25,000 staffers after its buyout of EDS. Industry statistics say that about 1,417,000 tech staffers are out of work so far this year, and that's just in Silicon Valley... IT Water Cooler Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:51:53 CDT Brian.oco http://www.daniweb.com/blogs/entry3303.html