Techworld Blogs

Karmic Koala polish fixes EPS support issues in Inkscape

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:18:29 GMT

The requirement for a new brochure last week got me tackling one of those periodic (and in my case instantly forgettable) gotchas - how to do I import EPS images into Inkscape? I’ve been using Ubuntu Linux for years but...

Sungard's John and Bob: the guys who get it to work

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:10:18 GMT

Last night I spent a delightful two-and-a-half hours on the phone. And this despite the fact that: (a) it was Saturday night; and (b) the call started at 10pm which meant I was sitting at my desk instead of down...

Counting the (real) cost

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 08:56:08 GMT

Energy efficiency - that's the name of the game.Every company I meet these days drops energy efficiency (or power efficiency - the terms seem to be interchangeable, suggesting that rather a large number of people in the IT business skipped...

Windows 7 - a computing tax people are willing to pay

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:10:54 GMT

In the Internet age, operating systems are made little by little, update by update. So why the fuss about Windows 7 upgrade which comes on a DVD inside a cardboard box?Every other bit of software feels like a choice, but...

Microsoft with all to play for

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 06:57:29 GMT

It's been a day that the industry has waited for for some time: Windows 7 launch day. It seems that it wasn't long ago that commentators were asking whether Vista would be Microsoft's last operating system - we all know how...

Farewell Darl McBride ... gone but not missed

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 16:36:56 GMT

No-one derives pleasure from seeing someone lose a job but there must have been a few smiles around the software community when it was reported that SCO president and CEO Darl McBride had got the boot from SCO.The news came...

Getting Windows XP to work with fast Wi-Fi

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:32:46 GMT

The WEP encryption standard fell first in the war against wireless insecurity, discredited by simple hacks. Now, with the arrival of high-speed wireless technology in the form of 802.11n, it is WPA's turn to feel the chill of obsolescence. The...

OpenNMS: Enterprise Network Management Revealed

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:29:13 GMT

In the build up to the release of a series of benchmarking tests for network monitoring / management applications based on Open Source technologies, Tom Callway speaks to Tarus Balog, the CEO of the OpenNMS Group and current maintainer of...

The danger of the 'part-time' application

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 15:06:58 GMT

No application better typifies the ubiquity of ‘part-time software' than Acrobat Reader. Everyone uses it at some point, but very few use it every day. And that's where the danger starts.It's suffered a consistent flow of vulnerabilities in recent times,...

OpenERP: an introduction to Open Source ERP

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:12:17 GMT

An enterprise thrives or fails according to how well it does what it does. That much is, or should be, obvious. Inevitably, as they grow processes are put in place which seek to improve efficiency. In recent years with essentially...

Fast Wi-Fi's little secret - you have to turn on WPA2 encryption

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:55:58 GMT

Here's what most people know about 802.11n high-speed Wi-Fi: it offers much higher throughput and signal stability over greater distances. Now the bit that hasn't yet sunk in for many: getting that throughput could mean changing the type of encryption...

Thinking of a Windows 7 upgrade? Read this first.

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:47:00 GMT

Is Windows 7 a good upgrade for a recent Vista PC that is otherwise performing quite happily? The first timings are in for Windows 7's boot and shutdown performance and the figures aren't that flattering. My test was to compare...

Microsoft's 'free' anti-virus is long overdue

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 16:13:45 GMT

Microsoft has just thrown the anti-virus industry a problem called Microsoft Security Essentials. The problem is the incredibly obvious one - it's free.What's amazing is not that Microsoft is handing out something for free, but that it has taken them...

Data centres are actually pretty interesting

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:57:42 GMT

I had the opportunity this week to tour a purpose-built data centre this week, thanks to Equinix, which provides network-neutral data centre and interconnection services. The tour provided me with a fascinating insight to the thinking and planning needed for...

Why we moved to Drupal

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:45:03 GMT

At Sirius we've just completed the migration of our corporate website from Joomla! to Drupal. There are many discussions of the relative merits of Drupal and Joomla!, but we thought it would be interesting to discuss what we've learned. Joomla!...

Warning: handle USB 3.0 with care

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:35:14 GMT

USB 3.0 will turbocharge throughput speeds for external hard drives, but buyers beware. To get the best out of the new standard will probably take a SATA 3.0 hard drive.With the news from Freecom (coincidentally recently bought by giant Verbatim)...

BT: Give it up, you should be above this nonsense

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 10:04:57 GMT

A few weeks ago, while away on business, I got a call from the pushiest marketing guy in the world. This person was, I hope, not a member of BT staff, but merely someone from a marketing company running a...

The limits of anti-virus restated

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:52:24 GMT

The Zbot Trojan's ability to evade anti-virus engines is bothering security company Trusteer, although whether their depressing detection numbers tell us much about the effectiveness of AV is moot.The company collected data from 10,000 PCs using the ‘Rapport' browser agent...

Is AndroMDA/MagicDraw a viable combination for open source projects?

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 08:28:54 GMT

One of the projects I’ve been working on recently is a large web application designed using MDA (Model-Driven Architecture). Now I confess that my Java experience lags at least a decade behind my C experience, but I feel that I’ve...

Simple Request Tracker customisations using callbacks

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:12:42 GMT

At Sirius we're fans of Request Tracker, which is excellent free software for running a help desk. One reasonably common question on the Request Tracker user's mailing list is "how do I make setting a subject mandatory when creating a...

How much will a fibre rollout actually cost?

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:01:32 GMT

Gartner has just published a new report which predicts a bandwidth divide in the next three to five years between urban and rural areas, with those living in the countryside being left behind in the digital slow lane.This bandwidth divide...

Dave Page on PostgreSQL and PGDay.EU 2009

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 09:49:38 GMT

In the build up to PGDay.EU 2009, an event which we're sponsoring, Tom Callway caught up with friend and colleague Dave Page to talk about the PostgreSQL project and how this somewhat unsung Open Source project is taking on the...

A quick lesson in network management

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 13:42:38 GMT

Why is that we can get the budget (albeit it after a struggle) to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds on new network infrastructure, and can’t get that little bit extra to buy the software to manage it?...

Every little bit helps

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:32:55 GMT

Has the supermarket mentality affected IT or are vendors more concerned about giving value for money for customers?While no-one’s expecting to see Cisco to come out with “buy a router and get one free2 offer” or Microsoft to introduce a...

My favourite computer store is PC World. Seriously.

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:22:57 GMT

Imagine a retail store that has falling sales, apparently isn't much loved by its customers and which analysts think will pretty soon be beaten out of existence by Internet-based rivals. Anyone want to stand up for PC World?Let's ignore the...