News (163)

Canonical readies its latest Ubuntu Linux for launch

Canonical will release the newest version of its Ubuntu version of Linux on Thursday, chief executive Mark Shuttleworth said Monday, but the company's profitability isn't on such a fast track. Read more »

Microsoft RPC exploit could be a packaged deal

While Microsoft has labeled Thursday's emergency patch MS08-067 as "critical" and provided a rareout-of-cycle fix because its exploit could easily be used as worm on a compromised network, one security researcher doesn't think it will happen that way. Read more »

Microsoft confirms SP2 for Vista, Office 2007

While most of the excitement concerning Windows and Office centres around the next full versions of the products, Microsoft is also working on the next service pack updates for each offering. Read more »

Botnets on mobile phones in 2009?

About 15 per cent of all online computers are infected with bots, says a new report on emerging threats for 2009 from Georgia Tech Information Security Center. Read more »

Windows XP gets another lifeline

Bowing to continued demand, Microsoft has again extended the life of Windows XP. Read more »

Is Microsoft a threat to VMware?

The talk of this year's VMworld conference in Las Vegas was how much of a competitive threat Microsoft, which weeks earlier announced the free release of its hypervisor product, will prove to virtualisation leader VMware. Read more »

Governments urged to lay foundation for SaaS

The best guardians of the underlying architecture are governments, a Salesforce.com executive said. Read more »

AMP re-thinks secure development

Australian financial services giant AMP has re-thought the way its information technology security team relates to the rest of the business as a result of the industry's increasing reliance on Web applications to deliver services. Read more »

Building quality code, not testing for quality

Involve quality in the entire application development process, instead of concentrating on it only from the software debugging stage, industry watchers have urged companies. Read more »

Apple in a bind over its DNS patch?

Three weeks after the disclosure of a serious flaw within the Domain Name System (DNS), Apple has yet to patch its MAC OS X operating system, but the company may be able to look to a third party in defense. Read more »

Features (190)

Security in the Web 2.0 Era

At the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2008 in Sydney this week, Andrew Walls, the research director and security analyst at Gartner presented "Security in the Age of E-Commerce and Web 2.0". Read more »

LINQ for next Java query API?

LINQ could become the next query API for Java, after the majority agreed at a recent meeting of the Object Database Technology Working Group (ODBTWG), as well as the ICOODB conference in Berlin that it was the optimal solution. Read more »

How to recession-proof IT

In the current economic environment, IT is well positioned to make a compelling case for strategic spending that can help weather the storm. Read more »

Why AOL wants developers to put passion over profit

Edwin Aoki, technology fellow at AOL, speaks about the impact web applications have had in the enterprise and what trends are emerging. Read more »

The importance of design symmetry in your Java types

Design symmetry means that if one method causes an effect, the logically opposite method should cause the opposite effect. While this can be a subtle point the results may be very significant. Read more »

Multi-core state of play

It promises to be the biggest revolution in programming since object orientation -- but it remains virtually unheard of to most developers. Thanks to the development and uptake of multi-core CPUs, developers must begin to consider truly programming in parallel. Read more »

A Beginners Guide to Threading

The golden age for programmers is over. For a decade we have been able to get away with writing slow code, knowing that the hardware would pick up the slack. Not so any more, hardware developers have decided that software developers need to raise their game, and get ready for a generation of multi-core processors. Read more »

Programming for Cell

As the Cell has seven usable cores and some exotic memory features, it can offer more parallelism than other chips in the marketplace but it comes at the cost of ease of programming. We discuss the challenges faced by this difficult yet highly parallel architecture. Read more »

Flash, HTML, AJAX: Which will win the Web app war?

The days when Web pages were static collections of text and graphics are long past. But as the Web matures, there's a fierce competition over which technology will propel it into a medium for rich, interactive applications. Read more »

Practical tips for setting up a UPS

Today I'm going to share some pointers I learned from my previous experiences in buying and setting up a UPS for a mid-size server room. Read more »

Blog (17)

Sun's JavaFX RIA platform MIA?

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Adobe and Microsoft have taken the early lead in the RIA market but Sun is still waiting to get out of the starting blocks with JavaFX. Is Sun too late to the party? Read more »

Android devs less than gruntled

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Yet more discouraging news on the Android front. Having hacked off its developer community by releasing updated SDKs to just a small group of chosen devs, Google has now given the brush-off to a petition that called for more to be given to the wider community. Read more »

Install usability practices in your shop with Silverback

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Getting started with usability testing doesn't require an expensive lab full of equipment and science nerds in white coats to poke and prod your users. Cheap and accessible software is readily available to help your team create better software for end-users. Read more »

SEO is voodoo

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Anyone who claims to know everything about search engine optimisation is either a fool or a liar. Read more »

Google's Android parts ways with Java industry group

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Google's Android software gives Sun Microsystems' Java technology a starring role -- but not the version of Java the rest of the mobile phone industry has been developing since the 1990s. Read more »

How Microsoft beat Linux in China and what it means for freedom, justice, and the price of software

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Thanks to some major concessions on source code and a precipitous price drop, the Chinese government has now thoroughly embraced Windows and Office, what does this mean for the world? Read more »

July book giveaway

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Help out in the Builder AU forums and win a book! Read more »

Rational community gets rolling

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- IBM's Rational Software Developer Conference kicked off it's festivities in Orlando, Florida with lights, camera and plenty of action this morning. Read more »

Code lean and keep it green?

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Being green doesn't mean waiting for efficient hardware. When every wasted CPU cycle counts is it time to re-evaluate efficient coding techniques? Read more »

CodeGear Q&A

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- CodeGear is the new name for Borland's developer tools business. Builder AU spoke to CodeGear about the handover and direction of the developer tools business under the new banner. Read more »

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  • Staff Crying, mooning and leaving

    In this week's roundup we see that continuous whining can get results, Linux users get 64-bit Flash and Moonlight previews, the latest in the Yahoo/Microsoft relationship and Senator Conroy ducks and weave in Senate Question Time. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Brendon Chase Sun eye Web developers with Netbeans 6.5

    Despite the recent employment axe hitting Sun the company has pushed out a new release of its Netbeans open source IDE with an eye to appeal more to Web developers. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

  • Renai LeMay BarCamp buzz: Let the hacking continue

    Attending last weekend's BarCamp in Sydney, it was hard to escape the conclusion that a certain "dot-com bust" flavour had seeped into the kool aid previously being drunk by Australia's web 2.0 and early stage start-up sector. Read more »

    -- posted by Renai LeMay

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