XMMS is a very nice program for playing music, but the default skin that comes with it is, well, “functional”. Fortunately, though, the program uses the same skin files as WinAMP 2.0 (several other pr ...
XML is everywhere. A quick Google search shows more than a _100 Million_ articles about the subject. The XML proponents gush about its ability to provide structure and yet remain human readable. The X ...
The free software and open source communities are changing what it means to write code. Specifically, they are extending its audience from a few fellow employees to, theoretically, anyone in the world ...
Some weeks ago I (Marco) was looking for new things to learn in Perl. I took a look at my library and reviewed the titles of the books I read less, and after some consideration found two topics: GUIs ...
Many who would cure us of spam look in the wrong place—technology—for the answer. These well-intentioned analysts rightly see this menace as resulting from a state machine that can be tweaked, but the ...
Everyone is eager to virtualize their working environment to take advantage of the abstraction layer it provides. Some may require resource isolation for enhanced security, others may need development ...
Back in the good old days, when men were men, women were women and the standard way for two computers to talk to each other was through a cable plugged into the serial port, was when I first took the ...
When the internet became a “thing” for the masses, it was around 1995. Well, it was a little earlier for some, and later for some others, but I think 1995 is a pretty good point of reference. At the t ...
Virtualization is set to become a key requirement for every server in the data center. This trend is a direct consequence of an industry-wide focus on the need to reduce the Total Cost of Operation (T ...
Many programmers are fluent in several programming languages. Most of these languages have some things in common. Loops and variables are fundamental features of most languages. I want to show you a d ...
For a variety of reasons, organizations have very strict policies regarding web site access. These policies usually mean that not all users have permission to access all web sites. This article will e ...
Any sufficiently complex software system has bugs, and those of us who aspire to produce high quality work also seek to not only minimize these, but guarantee that our code does what we say it ought t ...
In my last article my laptop had died a spectacular death from a full cup of coffee. I had to send it into the IBM depot, where they replaced nearly everything but the battery. Including the hard driv ...
I recently encountered a group of very enthusiastic teachers, who wanted to convince me to try a new e-learning environment, with astonishing quizzes, and drills of extreme originality. However, as I’ ...
Developing software within the free software model can be achieved with all sorts of different tools, but choosing the right tools can make a big difference to the success of your project. Even if you ...
All that you know about Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is wrong. From its inception to perceived usefulness, and ultimately, until the marketing department got a hold of it, LDAP has gro ...
When you think of the PowerPC processor, chances are you’ll think of just two platforms and, by association, two operating systems. Apple’s Mac OS X, which runs on Apple’s own hardware, and the AIX Un ...
Last week, my laptop died a sudden spectacular death-by-drowning, as a full cup of coffee poured into its keyboard. It emitted a pop sound, and the screen and the power shut off. What would your react ...
It all started with cavemen and their cave drawings. All cave drawings were WYSIWYM (What You See is What You Mean). I mean (no pun intended), if you saw a cave drawing, in which a hunter was chasing ...
Dspam filters spam with the best. In my installation, it stops over 98% of all spam: I’ve only had one false positive in the last year, and that was a message to the Dspam list that contained a real s ...