News (523)

Australian ICT industry worth $123 billion

Australia's ICT industry for the year to 30 June 2007 made $123 billion and employed just under 300,000 people, paying $21 billion in wages, according to numbers released this week by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Read more »

E-passport fraud no threat to SmartGate

The Australian Customs Service today said its inbound e-passport authentication system SmartGate would not be fooled by fake details, after a Dutch hacker claimed to have broken through similar systems in Europe. Read more »

Visual Studio 2010 can replay bugs

Microsoft has revealed plans for the next version of its development suite, Visual Studio 2010, to be able to record testing sessions so that developers can reproduce and closely examine software bugs. Read more »

CSIRO victorious in Wi-Fi appeal

Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has come one step closer to defending its patent relating to several Wi-Fi standards, with defendant Buffalo Technology losing a US appeal on the matter. Read more »

Microsoft fixes eight critical flaws with four patches

Microsoft on Tuesday released its September 2008 security bulletin summary.The four bulletins concern Windows GDI+, Windows Media Player, and Microsoft Office OneNote. All are rated critical by Microsoft. There is no cumulative patch for Internet Explorer this month. Read more »

Microsoft offers Hyper-V for free

Microsoft began a major virtualisation push late yesterday, with the introduction of new virtualisation tools and by making its core hypervisor product free of charge. Read more »

Apple in touchscreen Mac patent

Rumours of Apple working on a touchscreen Mac have been circulating for years, and will only grow with the revelation that the company is hoping to patent similar technology. Read more »

Microsoft patents 'Page Up' and 'Page Down'

Microsoft has been granted a patent on 'Page Up' and 'Page Down' keystrokes. Read more »

Push for Intel case to be public

News outlets and advocacy groups are seeking access to sealed court records in AMD's antitrust case against Intel. Read more »

Microsoft relaxes virtualisation rules

Microsoft has eased up its server licensing rules so that organisations can make more efficient use of servers in virtualised environments. Read more »

Features (213)

50 significant moments from internet history

We take you through 50 defining moments of the internet. Read more »

Help! My SQL Server Log File is too big!

Overgrown transactional log files can turn into real problems if they are not handled properly. This article discusses the perils of not handling SQL Server log growth properly, and what can be done to correct the problems. Read more »

Audit data using SQL Server 2005's COLUMNS_UPDATED function

This article looks at how the SQL Server 2005 COLUMNS_UPDATED function works and then discusses how to parse out the field names. Read more »

Using Mirrored Media Sets in SQL Server 2005

Mirrored Media Sets is a new feature in the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2005. It enables the creation of redundant copies of a backup file to reduce the possibility of a backup device malfunction. Here's how you make it work. Read more »

Aussie IT unions rise from the dead

Australia's creaky technology unions have finally awoken from their long slumber and have started to throw their weight around. Read more »

Secure ASP.NET 2.0 sites with Membership API

Beginning with ASP.NET 2.0, the Membership API was added to simplify adding security to a Web application. This article explains how to use the Membership API with a SQL Server back-end. Read more »

How to create a Blue Screen of Death

Feeling nostalgic about the Microsoft Blue Screen of Death, which used to plague desktops in the bad old days of Windows? No need to keep those feelings locked away. This handy guide will show you how to force your PC to recreate the infamous error. Read more »

Employ refactoring via Visual Studio to write better code

Refactoring is the practice of making your code cleaner and clearer without affecting the functionality. Find out what's included in Visual Studio's Refactor menu, and discover a couple of Visual Studio add-ins that bring refactoring to the Visual Basic community. Read more »

Capturing SQL Server 2005 database file size information

It's very important to capture trends of the sizes of your SQL Server 2005 database because it allows you to plan for future space needs, notice types of problems, and plan for time periods of heavy volume. I'll show you the simple method that I use to capture this information. Read more »

Visual Studio 2008 simplifies JavaScript debugging

One of the more cumbersome development tasks is debugging client-side JavaScript code. Tools such as Firebug are helpful, but in the case of Firebug, you're forced to use Firefox. Thankfully, Visual Studio 2008 provides a robust and developer-friendly environment for debugging JavaScript. Read more »

Video (2)

Charney: 9/11 attacks made security an asset

Until 9/11 security was simply a cost, says the VP of Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Group – the stock exchange being knocked out suddenly changed this. Read more »

Torvalds surprised by resilience of 2.6 kernel

  Read more »

Blog (136)

Blog against poverty

Brendon Chase [blogs:codemonkeybusiness] -- Worldwide Blog Action Day is 15 October, in 2008 the goal is to raise awareness and conversation around the worldwide topic of poverty and in the process raise money for the cause. Who's in? Read more »

Going the extra step but not the extra mile

Chris Duckett [blogs:betaliving] -- I've always been a big fan of going the extra mile with error messages, it's a good way to show that you actually care about the product to take the time to customise it even when things are amiss -- and yes, things will go wrong, you will not create the perfect application. 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 »

Microsoft says "open sesame"

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- While you may have been out last night watching the latest Rambo adventure with Sly Stallone making war for war's sake, Microsoft was busy declaring a truce with the open source community. Read more »

OpenID Foundation scores top-shelf board members

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- If the OpenID Foundation were a liquor cabinet, it just got stocked with some Grey Goose, Rhum Clement, and Gran Patron. Read more »

Hope you are seated

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- With projects winding down for the year, have you accidently found yourself fulfilling promises you never thought you'd keep in 2007? Funnily enough, this week has been full of news of projects we thought had retired to the beach house for the summer. Read more »

Wireless theft -- what's the harm?

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- Hand up if you have logged in to use some poor schmuck's unprotected wireless connection to overcome a bandwidth drought? Read more »

This week's news regex: Open[A-Za-z]+

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- If there were announcements to be made this week, many of the usual suspects chose Oracle's OpenWorld conference in San Francisco as the place to make them. Read more »

Hans Reiser trial gets under way

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- The murder trial of Hans Reiser, the 43-year-old Oakland, Calif.-computer programmer accused of killing his wife, is scheduled to begin Tuesday in what the San Francisco Chronicle predicts will be one of the most sensational local trials in recent memory. Read more »

Bloated code is bad for working families

Staff [blogs:syslog] -- It's hard to argue with large and bloated as adjectives, but streamlined is debatable. MinWin comes in at a hefty 25MB and for that price you don't even get graphical output. Read more »

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  • Staff XP stays on life support for longer

    This week's Roundup looks at Microsoft's decision to extend the life of Windows XP, the release of Microsoft Surface SDK, Firefox's new Geode plug-in, Yahoo's new tool -- Smush It and more. Read more »

    -- posted by Staff

  • Chris Duckett The good and truly awful celluloid depictions of computers

    Ever wonder why your lawyer uncle leaves the room whenever you turn over to Boston Legal? Or why your forensic science cousin can't stand crime drama? You know the answer: it’s the horrid trivialisation and dumbing down of an occupation to make it appear entertaining. Sometimes it is so unbelievable that it actually hurts and yelling at the screen is the only outlet. Read more »

    -- posted by Chris Duckett

  • Brendon Chase Apple's iPhone engineers to tour Sydney, Melbourne

    Aussie developers will be able to get up close and personal with some of the iPhone engineers in November to learn how to build applications for the platform. Read more »

    -- posted by Brendon Chase

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