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April 01, 2003

April 30, 2003
Networld+Interop Audio Report
By Brad Shimmin at 09:30 PM
Direct to you from the show floor in Las Vegas Nevada comes Executive Editor/Technology, Bruce Boardman with a nearly real-time report on everything from new technologies to groovy giveaways. (requires Real Player)

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N+I News for April 30th
By Tom LaSusa at 11:29 AM
Hot off the presses, here are some of today's announcements that caught our eye.

Coyote Point today announced a May 12 ship date for Equalizer 7.0, a Layer 7-enabled upgrade of the company's intelligent load balancing appliance. New options include SSL acceleration and a gigabyte interface. The Layer 7 capabilities, added to the E-350 intermediate and E-450 high-end models of the Equalizer, include cookie-based persistence, cookie stuffing, and URL load balancing.
AEP Systems announced today the release of AEP SureWare A-Gate 1.2, a secure sockets layer (SSL) VPN product with new Windows Terminal Services capability. This allows applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Lotus Notes, Microsoft Word and Excel and legacy applications to be made available to users with no requirement to pre-install the client software on their computers. Updates for this version include increased performance, enhanced authentication schemes and extended key management.
Marvell (no relation to Spider-Man) today debuted and demonstrated a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) copper transceiver for IEEE 802.3ak 10GBASE-CX4 applications. Replacing optical links with copper, they contend, will significantly lower the cost of 10GBASE-CX4 links.

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April 29, 2003
Network Computing's Best of Interop 2003
By Brad Shimmin at 06:25 PM

Thanks to all those who entered our yearly competition for the best technology to come out of the Networld+Interop show in Las Vegas. You'll find below the winners from this evening's ceremony. But we also invite you to log into our official site to see past winners, view the complete finalist list, or download marketing materials. Congratulations to all those who won!

Convergence Technology (VBrick Systems, VBXcast)
Enterprise Network Infrastructure (3Com Corporation, 3Com NJ90 Network Jack)
Network Applications Software (Computer Associates, CleverPath Portal)
Network Management (Panacya Inc., Panacya BusinessAware 2.2)
Network Servers & Peripherals (Digital V6 Corp., Kaveman 16)
Networked Storage (Cisco Systems Inc, Cisco MDS 9000 IP Storage Services Module)
Network Test & Measurement (Ixia, Optixia & OLM1000STXS24)
Performance Enhancement (Nauticus Networks, Nauticus N2000 Series of Intelligent Data Center Switches)
Security (netForensics, Inc., netForensics V3.1)
Wireless Technologies (AirMagnet Inc., The AirMagnet Distributed System)
Best Startup (Tarari, Inc, Tarari Anti-Virus Content Processor)

And the Best of Interop 2003 grand prize winner is:

VBrick Systems, VBXcast

We'd like to also thank our hard-working judges for this year's competition:

Ron Anderson, Network Computing Magazine
Bruce Boardman, Network Computing Magazine
Elizabeth Clark, Network Magazine
Mike DeMaria, Network Computing Magazine
Sean Doherty, Network Computing Magazine
Mike Fratto, Network Computing Magazine
David Greenfield, Network Magazine
Joseph F. Kovar, Computer Reseller News
Lori MacVittie, Network Computing Magazine
Don MacVittie, Network Computing Magazine
Peter Morrissey, Network Computing Magazine
Frank Ohlhorst, Computer Reseller News
Steve Schuchart, Network Computing Magazine
Greg Shipley, Network Computing Magazine
David Strom, VARBusiness

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Well-Connected Videos
By Brad Shimmin at 10:03 AM
We're sorry to announce that our video footage from last night's Well-Connected awards ceremony has been slightly delayed. But do not fear, we have posted below our own hand-picked, editors' choice uncommercials used in last night and last year's shows. Grab your Real Player and enjoy.

Our Favorite Videos
	Windows gives you wings.
	Staff meetings on casual Friday.
	Crossing Over with Site Editor Tom LaSusa.
	The beat generation is back, sort of.
	And of course the video we wish we'd never made.

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N+I News for April 29th
By Brad Shimmin at 07:48 AM
Hot off the presses, here are some of today's announcements that caught our eye.

NETGEAR today announced the launch of a dual-band 802.11a+g VPN firewall solution, the NETGEAR ProSafe Dual-Band Wireless VPN firewall (FWAG114). With the ability to simultaneously support 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g WLAN standards, the FWAG114 is a networking solution that combines the flexibility of Ethernet and wireless connectivity through a four-port switch with NAT routing and a dual-band, tri-mode 802.11a+g wireless access point.
CyberGuard unveiled a new enterprise-class central management solution - Global Command Center(TM) - to the network security market. Utilizing Microsoft's latest point-and-click GUI (graphical user interface) technology and advanced object-based management concepts, the product will enable large enterprises to implement and manage security policies easily and consistently across complex, geographically dispersed networks of firewalls and virtual private networks (VPNs).
Websense today announced the general availability of Websense Explorer(TM). Unique to the employee Internet management market, the new Web-based, interactive reporting tool enables corporate managers to click through employee Internet use information in order to analyze trends and identify high risk Internet use, such as hacking, malicious code, spyware and Internet storage applications.
Cisco today announced the Cisco(R) NPE-G100 Network Processing Engine, an intelligent, feature-rich processor, for the Cisco 7300 Series routers. The processor powers the Cisco 7304 with the widest array of Internet Protocol/Multiprotocol Label Switching (IP/MPLS) services necessary for customer network-edge applications for enterprises and service providers.
TRUSTe and IronPort today announced a partnership to improve the Internet community's ability to identify trusted sources of email. The scourge of spam and the response of misfiring spam filters have resulted in consumers' failure to receive wanted email, legitimate senders' inability to deliver messages and spiraling Internet Service Provider (ISP) costs to filter spam without blocking legitimate email. TRUSTe and IronPort address these problems for all constituents with Bonded Sender(TM) -- certified by TRUSTe and SenderBase(TM), providing a proven solution for ISP's to identify legitimate sources of email.

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April 28, 2003
And the winner is...
By Brad Shimmin at 09:33 PM

We're pleased to bring you the winners of the 9th Annual Well-Connected Awards, live from Networld+Interop in Las Vegas Nevada. Below you'll find the winners of our seven technology categories. For more information, we invite you to visit our official site.

Security

Category Winner: ETM System 3.0 , now shipping 4.0 -- Securelogix Corp.
Desktop Firewall Sygate Secure Enterprise 3.0 -- Sygate Technologies
Host Intrusion Prevention System OKENA StormWatch 3.0; OKENA StormFront 2.0 -- OKENA (acquired by Cisco)
Application Firewall SecureComputing Sidewinder G2 -- Secure Computing Corp.
Authentication System SafeWord PremierAccess 3.1 -- Secure Computing Corp.
WebSite Application Security System AppShield 4.0 -- Sanctum
Managed VPN Service Fiberlink Global Remote -- Fiberlink Communications Corp.
Hardened Linux Solution EnGarde Secure Linux -- Guardian Digital
Intrusion Detection System IntruShield 4000 and Security Mangement System -- IntruVert Networks

Network & Systems Management

Category Winner: ProactiveNet 4.1.2 -- ProactiveNet
Configuration Management Solution Orchestream Service Activator 3.0 (acquired by MetaSolv January 2003) -- MetaSolv Software
Network Analysis and Diagnostic Tool SolarWinds Engineer�s Edition -- SolarWinds.Net
Network Management Suite InCharge Solution Suite -- SMARTS
Traffic Management and Shaping Solution PacketShaper 4500 -- Packeteer
Application Management Solution ProactiveNet 4.1.2 -- ProactiveNet
Desktop/Mobile Management Solution NetSupport Manager 7.0 -- NetSupport
System Management Suite BMC Patrol 1.2.0 for Microsoft Windows Servers, now shipping version 3.0.01 -- BMC Software

Mobile & Wireless

Category Winner: Tsunami QuickBridge 60 -- Proxim Corp.
Enterprise WLAN System Cisco Aironet 1200 Series -- Cisco Systems
Enterprise Mobile Computing Device G100 -- Good Technology
Point-to-Point Wireless Bridge Tsunami Quickbridge 60 -- Proxim Corp.
WLAN Management and Security System SMCNetworks EliteConnect WLAN Security System -- SMC Networks
Cellular Wireless Data Service Verizon Wireless Express Network(SM) -- Verizon Wireless
Wireless LAN Analyzer AirMagnet Handheld Wireless LAN Analyzer v 2.5 -- AirMagnet

Digital Convergence

Category Winner: MGW 2400 -- Optibase
Content Delivery Device Volera Excelerator 2.1, now shipping 2.2 -- Novell
Streaming Media Product MGW 2400 -- Optibase
Unified Messaging Solution Communite 2.2 -- Interactive Intelligence

Business Applications

Category Winner: Nobilis Ci -- Nobilis Software
Web Services Platform WebLogic Workshop with WebLogic Server 7.0. -- BEA Systems
Employee Provisioning Solution eProvision Software 3.0 -- Business Layers
Business Intelligence Solution Cognos Series 7 -- Cognos
Business Productivity Solution Nobilis Ci -- Nobilis Software

Infrastructure

Category Winner: DataPower XA35 XML Accelerator 2.0 -- DataPower Technology
10 Gigabit Switch BlackDiamond 6808 switch with 10GLRi (10-Gigabit Ethernet module) -- Extreme Networks
Content Switch Big-IP 4.5 -- F5 Networks
Acceleration Device DataPower XA35 XML Accelerator 2.0 -- DataPower Technology
DNS Server Appliance Adonis DNS Server -- BlueCat Networks

Storage & Servers

Category Winner: PowerEdge 6650 -- Dell Computer Corp.
Server PowerEdge 6650 -- Dell Computer Corp.
Storage Software or Service Altiris Deployment Solution -- Altiris
SAN Technology QLogic SANbox2 16 Port Fibre Channel Switch -- Qlogic Corp.

Overall Winner: ETM System 3.0, now shipping 4.0 -- Securelogix Corp.

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N+I News for April 28th
By Brad Shimmin at 07:09 PM
Good evening folks. Before we get to the Well-Connected Awards winners later this evening (here on the Daily Blog), we thought you might enjoy a wrapup of the best press announcements from the opening day of Networld+Interop.

Fluke Networks today expanded its multi-award-winning OptiView suite of network testing and analysis products with the introduction of the OptiView WAN Analyzer. The OptiView WAN analyzer can capture packets on all discovered virtual circuits simultaneously.
NETGEAR announced the launch of the ME103 ProSafe Wireless Access Point, the first business-class wireless access point from NETGEAR designed to provide enterprise-class capabilities and security features at mid-market pricing attractive to small- and medium-sized businesses.
Spirent Communications announced the availability of its IPSec hardware accelerator for the SmartBits Performance Test Systems. With Spirent's IPSec Hardware Accelerator, enterprises, network equipment manufacturers and services providers can now validate that their VPN infrastructures are able to handle high traffic levels from multiple sources over multiple connections.
Synad Technologies today announced AgileAP, a remotely-configurable Linux-based WLAN access- point solution for use with the company's Mercury dual-band WLAN chipset. AgileAP includes a patent pending band-interleaving mode that makes it enable concurrent support for multiple 802.11 standards from a single-radio access point.
Tarari announced today the availability of an Anti-Virus Content Processor capable of accelerating anti-virus functions up to 10 times. The Tarari Anti-Virus Content Processor, designed to accelerate the compute-intensive functions of anti-virus decoding and decompression in servers and gateways, is dynamically reconfigurable and easily snaps into the standard PCI interface of servers, appliances and network devices.

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Let the madness begin
By Brad Shimmin at 09:36 AM
Well, today begins our annual right of spring, Networld+Interop, where hordes of Network Computing editors converge on that small but tall town in Nevada. Keep your browser tuned to this page for news and photos from the show as well as coverage of our Well-Connected and Best of Interop awards ceremonies. But first, we invite you to check out our latest issue posted to the site today. There you'll find our introduction to this year's Well-Connected Awards. We'll post the winners and our evaluations of the winning products later tonight (approximately 7pm Pacific) here.

On a related topic, our call for entries for this year's Well-Connected Awards Challenge is now closed. Thanks to everyone who entered. Be sure to stop back here later tonight to find out if you or someone you know won our 6gig MP3 player.

Below you can find our tentative schedule for show coverage this week. At the time specified, just stop back here for details.

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April 25, 2003
Just when you thought it couldn't get any more real...
By Lori MacVittie at 11:00 AM

It does.

Our Axis Network Camera is rolling live and you can visit any time you like. We've had some visitors already. How do we know? Because the Axis let's you pan and zoom around the lab and when it's moving it catches our attention. Check it out next week and have some fun!

Awful nice of me, isn't it? Especially since both Steve and I will be at Networld+Interop and the lab should be dark while we're gone. :-) But don't worry, I'll be back after N+I and working on setting up our permanent CRM server. I hope that by the time the review prints we'll have access available for all you Widget loving readers. But the lights will be back on and you'll have more luck playing with the camera then. We'll also be having a lot of action with Don MacVittie's upcoming EAI review. He'll be in the lab testing some solutions and determining which one will be a fit for NWC Inc.

See ya after Interop!

Posted here at 11:00 AM in NWC Inc

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April 24, 2003
n+i 2003 comin' at ya
By Brad Shimmin at 07:00 PM
Hi folks. Just a heads up to let you know that our editors will be on hand in Las Vegas next week at the now yearly but still seminal networking show, Networld+Interop. Throughout the week, we'll post news, opinions, and perhaps some photos direct from the show floor and surrounding environs (hopefully not from the craps table in Ceasers at 4am). Here's a quick rundown of the scheduled show coverage we'll provide here on the Daily Blog next week.

Monday Evening: Live coverage of the 9th annual Well-Connected Awards ceremony. At about 7pm pacific, we'll list the winners here. For now, you can check out the finalists here.
Tuesday Morning: Grab your RealPlayer and tune in to see the Well-Connected awards ceremony on-demand. Plus you'll be able to view our "Best of NWC" collection of uncommercials.
Tuesday Afternoon: At approximately 5pm pacific, we'll post the winners of our annual Best of Interop awards. In the meantime, we invite you to check out the finalists.
Monday -- Wednesday: From the show floor our editors will provide spot updates and random insights on vendor announcements and product goings on. Check back here to stream the audio, download the photos, and read the hastily gathered text.

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Novell BrainShare Report
By Brad Shimmin at 05:54 PM
In case you missed out on the goings on at BrainShare 2003 last week, our intrepid contributor, James E. Drews has posted the following CliffsNotes-esque show report.

Netware 6.5 is now in open beta (beta 3). I have had it in the closed beta form for a while now...
Novell has said that NetWare 7 will run on the traditional NetWare kernel, or if you want, it will run on top of Linux. Of course not a peep as to when this will show up. Most of what was promised at brainshare last year for future releases of netware are now part of netware 6.5.
All the ZEN products are now rolled into a single suite, ZENworks 6. The point products are still available, but the suite does have a tighter integration and they have added a few things (a subset of the Desktop DNA from another company that allows administrators to migrate user profile and additional information from say Win95 to WinXP (or any version of windows).
Novell now has an open source site, where they will put out their open source. The first major bit of code to hit the site is their UDDI server implementation. They haven't said what other items would be placed up there yet, but more is on the way. The site can also be used by anyone to post their source code.

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April 22, 2003
The Good, The Bad and the way too real
By Lori MacVittie at 06:27 AM

Exchange stopped working again. I thought perhaps it was connectivity issues with our ADS server, so I did what any good MS network admin does: I rebooted the ADS server, waited five minutes, and then rebooted the mail server.

It didn't help. With the traditional fix failing, I started digging a bit more. The MTA stack service was failing because .... there was less than 10MB disk space on the drive where the MTADATA directory resides. Ah ha! So let's make some room. Start by deleting the 3GB Exchange server install log file. Clean up the temp directories, empty the recycle bin. Still not enough room. After twenty minutes of removing everything that wasn't absolutely necessary (who needs Media Player on a server??) and moving the IIS root directories to a larger drive, the MTA stack service started and Exchange went "Wow! I can run." Note to self: reinstall Exchange on a disk with more space.

Our Axis network video camera came in late yesterday afternoon. All I can say is, "Wow." Talk about clarity and control. Easy only begins to describe how quick the installation was. Being completely web controlled helps, of course. We set it up (you can't have access just yet) and I tested it out remotely. Over GBE the streaming video was unbelievably high quality, but would it be as good over my 768kbps DSL? Not quite, but it was certainly head and shoulders above other network video I've seen. Control was less smooth, of course, but panning and zooming worked fine and I was able to zoom in and read some notes I'd left on the table in the lab. I'll get it configured shortly and get a link up to it so you can play around with it. It's definitely one amazing little camera.

Posted here at 06:27 AM in NWC Inc

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April 20, 2003
New content online
By Brad Shimmin at 07:16 PM
Hi everyone,

We've published the final installment of our April 17th issue today, featuring a review by Dave Molta and Dilip Advani of handheld WLAN analyzers and a workshop on SIP by Peter Morrissey.

Plus, we've got the following online specials up for grabs.

As always, you can grab the entire contents of the new issue from our RSS feed, or you can browse for stories here.

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April 18, 2003
So one in five us us has a life?
By Tom LaSusa at 11:37 AM
A recent poll by the nonprofit Pew Internet and American Life Project discovered that one in five Americans do not go online, and have no plans to ever do so. And while there's still plenty of folks who are signing up for internet access, about the same amount of people are actually dropping their current access.

Some of the main reasons for avoiding going online included credit card info theft risks, pornography, as well as the high cost of computers and internet access. Believe it or not, literacy could be an issue as well, with almost one quarter of our population unable to read well. Wow.

Personally if you ask me - I think the number one reason for avoiding the web is right here. But that's just me.

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Re: your last email
By Tom LaSusa at 11:21 AM
No doubt, your morning ritual is very much like mine -- it includes wasting anywhere between one to five minutes (sometimes more) sorting through emails, weeding out the actual, important ones from the aggravating Spam. And have you READ some of those subject lines? Its bad enough I have to clear them out of my personal account, but it's embarrasing to have to clean them out of my work inbox.

But as aggravating as those are - they're nothing compared to the misleading subject lines. You know 'em -- Just like the one above. Or how about "Your input requested", "Re: our conversation", "Re: Hey there", and so forth. It's easy to click an email open based on a quick glance at the subject line, rather than the sender (we've all done it), especially when you've got twenty or so sitting there. And what happens? You're reading about how you can increase the size of something on your body, or how someone wants to do something to you that would make "91/2 Weeks" look like "When Harry Met Sally." Or Worse, the text inside the email is misleading, you click on the link, and you're taken to some adult oriented website.

Fortunately, the FTC is going to take a crack at stopping this practice. Their first target is Brian D. Westby -- owner of over 20 adult websites. Westby's been sending Spam emails with misleading headlines, providing non-working links to "unsubscribe" options and deploying the emails with false reply-to info. And they don't plan on stopping with Westby.

Will this make a difference? I'd like to hope so. But of course the realist in me says that for every Brian Westby they put out of business, there's ten more coming up with even more devious spam practices. They'll never be able to get everyone. But I suppose even one less Spam in my inbox would be better. Though some days, I'd never notice if it wasn't there.

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April 16, 2003
In the midst of a review...
By Lori MacVittie at 07:13 PM

We're well under way of our review of CRM products for NWC Inc. We're feeling the pain of integration and scrutinizing each product as we know you'll be interacting with it eventually. The biggest problem seems to be that the only remote connection our DB2 database will take is either via JDBC through code or an ODBC connection - using named pipes. TCP/IP communications are failing. I'm not sure why, it looks like it's configured correctly. Something else to dig into after this review is finished.

In other news, we're about to receive a new network video camera from Axis Communications. We'll see if we can strongarm Brad into putting up a link to it so you can see more of the lab.

Posted here at 07:13 PM in NWC Inc

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April 13, 2003
New content online
By Brad Shimmin at 07:02 PM
Hi folks. We've just published the first installment of our April 17th issue of Network Computing. In this issue, we're featuring a a story by David Joachim and Jonathan Feldman on how McCarran International Airport. Find out how the IT shop for the 11th busiest airport in the nation took control of all the front-end systems that present information about flights, passengers and personnel throughout the airport.

Plus, we've got the following online features for your reading and listening pleasure.

IT Minute: CFP 2003 Show Report with Patrick Mueller (require Real Player)
New Top 11 List. Signs you're spending too much time on Google
Network Design Manual: Book Excerpt: Designing Storage Area Networks

As always, you can grab the entire contents of the new issue from our RSS feed, or you can browse for stories here.

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April 11, 2003
Stupid Security Competition
By Brad Shimmin at 07:41 AM
Well, the ballots are at last in and the winners announced for the annual Stupid Security Competition. Hosted by Privacy International, this competition sought out the world's most stupid security measures. As you might expect, the MTA and select airports topped the list. You can find the complete list of winners and an explanation for each here.

Our favorite?

Most Inexplicably Stupid Award
Runner Up -- Heathrow Airport for quarantining a quantity of green tea
Last September 2002, I was flying through Heathrow Airport. Just ahead of me in the queue at the hand luggage X-Ray checkpoint was an elderly gentleman of Mediterranean appearance whose bag contained some items of interest to the security staff. The third item was a dual quarter pound cellophane wrapped cardboard package of loose leaf Chinese tea. Unfortunately, it was of a well known variety known as Gunpowder Tea, and had this printed on the packaging. Obviously this was of such importance, that, despite already forcing the passenger to check his hand bag as hold luggage, it was decided that the tea was allowed, but that the evil word "Gunpowder" was not. Consequently the security staff then rummaged around (thereby delaying me and the rest of the queue) and found a plastic bag into which they decanted the fragrant tea leaves, and confiscated the cardboard packaging!

Obviously, meaning is highly dependent upon context and circumstance.

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April 07, 2003
Extended Top 11 List
By Brad Shimmin at 07:44 PM
In conjunction with our recent Top 11 list on OS/2, we're pleased to bring you our extended, 32-bit version, containing all of the top suggestions tendered by your fellow Network Computing readers. Enjoy.

Top 11 Ways the world would be different if OS/2 had won the operating systems race

There would be a "XP-OS/2" emulation. Touting "Better OS/2 than OS/2" -- Scott Reimers
Shutting down the OS from the keyboard would take 16 multi-key keystrokes (referenced in the middle of a 3" thick manual) - and still ask, "Are you sure?" -- Dave Deschere
Entire inventory of Windows95 CD-ROMs remarketed and sold as coasters for cans of beer. -- Matthew Ellsworth
Dell, Gateway, Compaq forced to pay license fee for.....well, some things never change. -- Matthew Ellsworth
Opera Software's web browser works on IBM's website, but IE crashes. -- Matthew Ellsworth
Steve Ballmer ends up as a manager at WalMart. -- Matthew Ellsworth
Bill Gates writes tome of poetic verse titled "Monopoly Lost", but claims it was his idea first and that it bears no similarity to Milton's classic. -- Matthew Ellsworth
Paul Allen couldn't afford to own Portland Trailblazers; has to settle for minor league sensation Redmond Reboots. -- Matthew Ellsworth
Ex-millionaire Bill Gates gets drunk and beats the crap out of a Nintendo. -- Matthew Ellsworth
Netscape Time Warner -- Chuck Evans
Two words: Melinda Gerstner -- Chuck Evans
Bill Gates predicts the demise of the PS2 and introduces a "run anywhere" programming language, Doors. -- Randy Ramsey
Internet Servers wouldn't run an operating system whose name ends in an 'X'. -- Michael Paschal
Reboot wouldn't be one of the 3 R's. -- Michael Paschal
Software alpha testing would happen at IBM, instead on your desktop. -- Michael Paschal
Greed would still be considered one of the seven deadly sins. -- Michael Paschal
I wouldn't have to answer my kid's question of why there isn't a Windows 96 and 99. The questions would have been more metaphysical like "What does Warp mean?" -- Harry Levinson
Bill Gates would be selling computer training videos on late night television. "OS/2 for beginners, Free with only $7.95 shipping and handling." -- Craig Myers
IBM would have been trust busted into three companies, software hardware and service. The hardware company would then merged with AT&T to sell computers to homeowners. The new company would be called IBM AT HOME -- Craig Myers
World wide productivity would be 25% higher with the elimination of "reboot time" -- Gregg Young
Microchannel would still be king! -- Jim Sierk
Beta would beat VHS and remain the most popular -- Jim Sierk
Quicker LINUX on the desktop -- Jim Sierk
The Lotus Approach certification is considered valuable to companies that aren't Lotus or IBM. -- Mark Jass
ATMs and alarm systems run Windows 3.1, requiring multiple restarts a day. -- Mark Jass
You could get Linux for your notebook without paying the Microsoft tax for an operating system you don't want. IBM unbundled their operating systems from their hardware in the late 1960s after being taken to court by IBM 360/370 plug compatible hardware manufacturers. -- Larry Karnis
OS/2000 would do transaction processing on a mainframe, but the port to your Nokia would be a "bit" behind schedule
Redmond would still be a Starbucks and a Safeway warehouse. -- RR
Larry Ellison would invite his VP Bill Gates over for sushi. -- RR
The OS-Box still wouldn't be as cool as a PS2. -- RR
You wouldn't need a P-4 with 256mb to play solitaire. -- Douglas Lancaster
Jokes would be very different - how many have you seen that include a $ (Micro$oft!) -- Bob Baer
IBM Office updates would be gigantic, free, and quarterly - they would be shipped to you on your new XXXX-gig hard drive, which you would need to run them... -- Bob Baer
Linux? How about OS2/3270 instead? -- Bob Baer
You still have to load those silly diagnostic diskettes to get meaningful error messages! -- Bob Baer
Everything you ever wanted to know about Windows is in a Red Book that you can't find on the IBM web site... -- Bob Baer
No more commercials with guys in tin foil suits or rhetorical questions about where you want to go today... -- Bob Baer
At least all of their old machines can be seen at the Smithsonian! -- Bob Baer
Wow! Windows is fast, flexible, and stable! -- Bob Baer
SNA would be the Internet Protocol. -- Allan Alton
There would have been an army of "IBM Certified config.sys engineers" -- Mike Moody
The "Wizard of OZ", would be renamed, The "Wizard of OS". -- Josaeph M. Manuto
Since our OS/2 computers would be listening to us, we'd all have to learn to think before speaking -- Rhodes Hileman
Much less Virus, etc attacks...OS/2 is too hard for most of the skriddies to hack. -- G J Feig
Probably less LookoutExpress HTML-attachments on email. -- G J Feig
2.5mhz PCs that actually compute at that speed. -- Jon Z
Millions of people who now spend their time reinstalling Windows, recovering from crashes, and rebooting Windows could spend their time doing something productive. The world's economy would grow by leaps and bounds! -- Steve McCrystal
No more BSD (Blue Screen of Death)! -- Lionel C. Abrahams
Can put my multiprocessors to use -- Lionel C. Abrahams
AV software - a microniche product for the truly paranoid -- Felix Miata
Defragging software - what's fragmentation? -- Felix Miata
Uptime measured in days instead of minutes. -- Felix Miata
AOL would never have had the power to buy Time-Warner (what's AOL?) -- Felix Miata
Reinstalling - something you do when the HD dies, and you had quit backing up 6 months ago because you never needed those backups. -- Felix Miata
Bill Gates' new garage wouldn't have cost more than your expected lifetime income. -- Felix Miata
Setup Wizard would no longer be preparing the InstallShield Wizard to assist with the rest of installation; instead, the user would be preparing 3 floppies to recover from the failed installation. -- Andrew Belov
You wouldn't have to upgrade your hardware/software every time the OS was upgraded, as unlike Windows, which is neither backward nor forward compatible, the 32-bit versions (2.0+)of OS/2 now in its 11th year, is both, The system architecture is able to be incrementally changed, because it was designed right the first time, and running on the same hardware, OS/2 still has a huge performance lead. -- Mike O'Connor
Bill Gates would be my pool boy. -- Jason Hicks

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April 04, 2003
Confucius say ...
By Lori MacVittie at 07:47 AM

if you want DNS query results to be returned you must allow them to pass through the router. Trying to keep down the number of extended ACLs on our Cisco router is becoming difficult. But I believe this was the last one we needed to make everything work right.

All the disks are imaged for the CRM test, and we've set up one of our new Dell 2650's to run Oracle on RH Linux for our upcoming review of EAI solutions, in which we're going to improve upon our simulation infrastructure by integrating more feeds and applications together.

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April 03, 2003
That's alot of Calimari!
By Tom LaSusa at 08:43 AM
Yeah, I know -- this is WAY off topic. But since we sort of glossed over April Fool's this year, I thought a little piece of "odd news" wouldn't hurt.

Apparently the mythical, rarely seen Giant Squid has competition -- from none other than the COLOSSAL Squid! That's right, colossal. Check out the pic of this bad boy (or girl, since it was a female specimen) here. Not only does it have the usual suction cup action going for it, but it has RAZOR SHARP hooks in its tentacles! What the heck?!?

Fortunately, all us snorkelers and scuba divers can relax -- it prefers the chilly Antarctic waters as its home.

Okay okay, back to work. What are you doing sitting around looking at pictures of oversized calimari for?

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Completed Issue Online
By Tom LaSusa at 08:29 AM
Morning everyone,
The rest of our April 3rd, 2003 issue is online. This half features a nice review of three DNS appliances by Joe Hernick and Dean Ellerton. There's also Sean Doherty's Sneak Preview of Virage's VS Webcasting application, which lets you get your dynamic messages broadcast without worrying about expensive, professional studios or service providers.

Plus there's plenty more where that came from.

As always, you can grab the entire contents of the new issue from our RSS feed, or you can browse for stories here.

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April 01, 2003
Are You Connected?
By Tom LaSusa at 11:48 AM
No, we're not asking if you've got a friend in Hollywood (although I do have this great script...but I digress). It's getting close to that time of the year again -- Networld+Interop time. You now what that means -- our annual Well-Connected Awards! As usual, we're offering our kind readers the chance to take part in the fun and frivolty, even if you cannot be there in person. We're starting as we always do every year, with our Well-Connected Awards challenge.

It's very simple. All you have to do is guess which products and services will get our "top nod" at the show. If your answers match our editors', you could win a shiny, jolly, candy-like Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox "C". Alright, it's probably not candy-like, but you should be drooling all the same!

So show us what you know, already!

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