Peter Coffee

Fictional “Dallas” patriarch Jock Ewing once challenged his son, J.R., demanding: “When are you going to learn a little subtlety?” “Why should I,” J.R. demanded. “Because lack of it turns friends into enemies, and enemies into fanatics.” Microsofts behavior in the last few weeks has been decidedly unsubtle, and the ranks of the fanatics are […]

I was working on a story at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference last month when Microsofts John Montgomery, product manager for .Net Framework, sat down next to me and pulled out his cell phone. “Youve got to see this,” he said. Punching a few buttons, he pulled up a list of Seattle landmarks on the […]

Almost unnoticed in the Windows XP hoopla is the big bet Microsoft is making on wireless mobility. “Microsoft expects 802.11b to be present in most places where people spend time,” said Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates in his keynote speech at the companys Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles last month. That expectation […]

In a session at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference last month, Group Vice President Bob Muglia revealed the previously obscure meaning of the companys cryptic .Net label for its emerging services strategy. Following an ironic, self-deprecating video admitting that HailStorm was perhaps the worst software code name ever coined, Muglia discussed the licensing terms (www.eweek.com/links) […]

Magnetic tape and I go back a long way. Thirty years ago, I was mispronouncing “hysteresis” (the magnetically sticky behavior that makes it possible for tape to record stuff) while tuning my open-reel stereo deck to minimize analog hiss. Dolby hardware was beyond my means. I still have most of the tapes that I made […]

If your only tool is a hammer, its often said, all problems look like nails. What, then, does the world look like to someone who owns a hammer factory? Oracles Larry Ellison and Suns Scott McNealy each propose to define terrorist threats in terms of nails that their products can pound down. “We need a […]

If I make this one little change to the software, how much could it hurt the schedule? Impact Analysis in MKS Engineer Integrity, released at midmonth, offers application developers and team leaders a far firmer foundation for decisions on making late-breaking changes to software specifications. Analyzing source code structure in C, C++ and Java, Engineer […]

A former U.S. President may someday live down the quotation “It depends on what the meaning of the word is is.” His sympathizers might include those who devise natural language database query systems. To a speaker of Spanish, that presidential faux pas is just an observation that English makes one verb do the job of […]

Internet attacks are a form of a public health problem, and this months Top 20 list of Internet security risks offers tactics to contain this costly and potentially contagious nuisance. Like the cold-causing rhinovirus, most Internet attacks are spread through routine social contact (albeit electronic, rather than physical). Like Internet attacks, conversely, the rhinovirus comes […]

When New Yorks trading floors closed following Septembers terrorist attacks, financial Web sites lost their data streams—with revealing results. For example, the financial page at Netscape.com (see chart) reported alarmingly that the Dow Industrials had opened the day at zero, with results last updated at “NaN p.m.” Nonprogrammers might well have wondered, “Why NaN?” NaN, […]