Peter Coffee

Its ironic that Mathematica 5.1, an intensely mathematical software workbench, delivers improvements over Version 5.0 that are vastly out of proportion for a .1 upgrade. The Mathematica 5.1 environment released last month allows users to incorporate Web services functions into calculations, as well as to work with previously unsupported mainstream data types in a way […]

Im as guilty as anyone of using “information technology” as a catchall phrase, even when it comprises two quite different kinds of tools. There are systems that deliver entertainment, and there are systems that enable decisions. I prefer not to see those tasks confused. Unfortunately, irrelevant entertainment is pushing its way into decision support environments, […]

Youve gone as far as youre going to go in your organization by “building bit buckets.” That was the admonition of Michael Moon, president and CEO of Gistics, when addressing an attentive ballroom full of content creators and managers in Los Angeles earlier this month. On the plus side, Moon continued, there are millions of […]

A programming aid should always shorten a programmers list of problems. Many tools fall short of that goal, merely replacing familiar coding tasks with the nuisance of instructing an intrusive, clumsy assistant. One welcome exception is Agitator 2.0, a capable and intuitive test environment for Java developers, delivered this month by Agitar Software Inc. Click […]

As a member of eWEEKs editorial board, Ive been one of a group of voices thats jointly encouraged the industry to keep the Internet a patent-free zone—or at least, a fee-free zone, with any patented technologies adopted on the Internet only on the grounds that they become freely licensed to all users. Weve urged that […]

Whats worth almost any price to protect if its the only one you have, but is almost worthless as long as even a single other copy exists? The answer: source code for a critical enterprise application or for firmware in a manufactured product. The corollary: You and your insurance company had better share a common […]

It sounded like the worst sort of sophomoric parody, worthy of the most rabidly anti-Microsoft blog, but it turned out to be the literal truth. A team of three inventors, two of whom are publicly identified as “members of the Visual Basic team,” has applied (in a filing published late last week) for a U.S. […]

When you hear the phrase “flying in formation,” you probably think of the dazzling maneuvers of an air-show team such as the Thunderbirds or Blue Angels. You see another example, though, whenever you drive on a freeway: vehicles moving at high speed, in close proximity, pursuing similar but independent goals with only each vehicles movements […]

Todays “perfect storm” of sophisticated attacks, corporate governance mandates and public awareness of database security risks demands the prompt and determined response of database builders and application developers. In this report, eWEEK Labs profiles the combination of emerging technologies and developer strategies that enables an enterprise team not merely to survive but also to triumph […]

When an IT vendor wants to get my attention, the most effective technique is to rub my nose in one of my own recent columns and say, “You wanted someone to do this? Look at us.” I invited this kind of response when I wrote at the end of September about the crying need for […]