Sean Michael Kerner

COMMENTARY: I spent a few days this week at the SecTor conference in Toronto, an event that isn’t quite the Black Hat of the North (though maybe we could call it the Black Toque of the North). What made this event interesting for me is the mix of technology approaches discussed, ranging from no-tech hacking […]

The latest Linux 2.6.27 kernel release is out with support for Webcams as well as a new file system for SSDs (solid state disks) (define) among its improvements. The continued evolution of Linux overall is about pushing the envelope of technology capabilities as it battles for mind and market share against Windows and Unix. “The […]

Microsoft’s .NET framework on Linux is getting a big boost with the official release Monday of Novell’s Mono 2.0. The Mono 2.0 release is Novell’s open source implementation of Microsoft’s .NET platform. With the latest version, the gap between the two is getting smaller. Even though Mono 2.0 is compatible with Microsoft’s .NET 2.0, it’s […]

While there are some problems with IT security in the U.S., Americans in general have better security behavior to prevent data loss than other parts of the world. That’s a general finding in a new report sponsored by Cisco that asked 2,000 globally dispersed professionals about their views on behaviors that could lead to data […]

The .ORG, Public Interest Registry (PIR) gTLD (generic top level domain) is perhaps best known as the non-profit registry for millions of organizations. It could also soon be known as a more secure domain space too, as .ORG adopts the DNSSEC (DNS Security Extensions), a set of extensions used to add an additional layer of […]

For some Linux distribution projects, new releases come twice a year. That had been the plan for Gentoo Linux this year, until it canceled its current planned release — the second time it’s done so in the past 12 months. But the news doesn’t necessarily mean a setback for the project. Instead, Gentoo developers said […]

NEW YORK — According to Phillippe Winthrop, research director at Strategy Analytics, there are 172 million smart phones in use today, and that number will grow to 462 million by 2012. All of those users are going to want Web browsing capabilities, but what are browser vendors doing to support that demand? In a session […]

NEW YORK — Datacenters. Every big enterprise has them, but how many actually have solid metrics to determine the value of their datacenter? In a session at Interop, Andreas Antonopoulos, senior vice president and founding partner at Nemertes Research, asked participants how they measure their datacenters metrics. He noted that the metrics people use tell […]

The Web browser is the principal tool by which we all connect to the Internet to consume content. It’s also one of the principal tools that attackers use to get at your personal data and compromise your computer. This helps explain a key trend with Web browser development and security features: virtual browsers. For example, […]

One of the cornerstones of the landmark interoperability deal between Novell and Microsoft was, and is, virtualization. Two years after they struck their agreement, Microsoft and Novell have extended their partnership. The partners are now finally rolling out a supported Linux on a Windows virtualization solution. The new supported Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on […]