News (32)

Ballmer tells Oz: get with the broadband

Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer yesterday tip-toed around Australia's broadband debate but said that if the country was to engage in cloud computing business that telcos and the government needed to 'get on with' delivering high speed broadband — at a fair price. Read more »

Google Chrome's open source ally: Microsoft

During Google's launch of its Chrome Web browser, the company went out of its way to acknowledge the debt it owes two open source projects, Firefox and WebKit. But Microsoft, an uncommon ally in the open source realm, might also deserve a tip of the hat. Read more »

When worlds collide: Microsoft funds Apache

Microsoft, one of the biggest rivals to open source programming, has begun funding the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), one of open source software's biggest supporters. Read more »

Tech greats bid farewell to Gates

As Bill Gates steps down from full-time work at Microsoft, well-wishing cheers and not-so-nice jeers are echoing from Silicon Valley. Read more »

The bonfire of online vanities: Web 2.0 critic speaks

Lee Siegel is a cultural critic who has written for The New York Times, Slate and The Nation. However, he is perhaps best known for what happened in 2006 when writing for The New Republic. Read more »

'Reckless' data loss outlawed in the UK

Anyone who recklessly loses personal data will face a "substantial" fine, after the UK government created a new civil offence. Read more »

Adobe Flash 9 update to destroy and save Web apps

Adobe is issuing an update to Flash Player 9 that it hopes will prevent Flash-based Web applications being used to launch attacks against consumers — but the update may also stop Flash apps working if developers don't heed Adobe's recommendations. Read more »

Wikipedia's neutrality is a 'facade'

An Australian academic has accused Wikipedia of "US-centric bias" over the way the online encyclopaedia's administrators edit user-generated entries. Read more »

Porn-blocker hit as Razor Gang slash AU$30m off tech

The Rudd government's so-called Razor Gang has taken the blade to some of the Howard government's pre-election promises for the 2007-08 fiscal year, including AU$30 million sliced from the federal tech budget. Read more »

Westpac turns to Web 2.0 free for all

Westpac has bucked the trend on policing Internet use in the workplace -- allowing staff to access Facebook from work, building a Web 2.0-like portal in-house and a Westpac-branded site on Second Life. Read more »

Features (22)

Troubleshoot Apache with these tips

The Apache Web server is well-proven, but can still offer an administrator headaches from time to time when things go wrong. Read more »

Do comments slow down PL/SQL?

I'm not sure where this started, but there's this rumour going around that if you put too many comments in an Oracle PL/SQL package, it impacts performance. That is, the more comments in your code the slower it runs. Is it true? Read more »

Local game studios face skill shortage

The Australian game development industry is now worth $130 million, employs around 2000 people -- and there has never been a better time to break into it. Read more »

Is a US$100 laptop truly useful?

There has been a lot of focus in recent years on creating inexpensive, affordable computers for users in the developing world, and at the forefront is Professor Nicholoas Negroponte. Read more »

Building on top of osCommerce

By choosing to modify an existing open source e-retailing system, Damian Hickey was able to accelerate the development process, but also took on board a score of additional problems. Read more »

Surviving in the wild with open source Java

Nick Gibson shows what the Classpath exception means you don't have to worry. Read more »

Coding fun solutions to crummy problems using XSLT collections

The developer: Edmond Woychowsky. The assignment: Create an on-line report for non-technical individuals that explicitly stated the changes made to the database. Dropping raw SQL in the middle of the report is not an option. Edmund's creative solution involves XML and XSLT collections. Read more »

The secrets of open source security

The Linux vs. Windows security debate is a contest of examples, which stand in place of the concepts that comprise a larger, more fundamental question of what the security benefits and detriments are for the open source and closed source development models. Read more »

Interview: Iain McDonald

Born and bred in Australia, Iain McDonald works at Redmond as director of the Windows Server Group. We caught up with McDonald briefly before TechEd 2005 to talk about the future of Microsoft's platforms. Read more »

Do you want source with that database?

Is Microsoft slowly becoming a more open source company? Read more »

Video (1)

Cyber-terrorism 'a big threat'

The UK dependence on computer systems leaves the country vulnerable to cyber-terrorist attack, according to former leader of the UK Liberal Democrats, Lord Ashdown. Read more »

Blog (1)

XSS fun with Howard: Liberal Party says no

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Political parties have no sense of humour. Far from being a revelation, it was merely reinforced yet again as both the major parties in this country had their sites fall victim to XSS. Read more »

Log in


Sign up | Forgot your password?

What's on?