Why I'm switching to Google Chrome; hint: it's for the same reason that I originally went to Firefox READ MORE

Latest Version Leverages Windows Volume Shadow Service (VSS) to Backup Open Files and Open Standard Formats for Data Compression and Encryption.

The Amanda Project, a ZmandaTM sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, announces the availability of Amanda 2.6.0p2. This latest version provides open file backup and recovery for Windows XP, Vista desktops and laptops and Windows 2003, 2008 servers, enabling system administrators to perform backup without impacting users and applications. By leveraging the standard zip format for backup images, Amanda 2.6.0p2 gives users the flexibility to recover their data with or without Amanda software. This version, complete with a Windows Installer and a 15-minute configuration guide, is available for free download. With this Zmanda-led release, Amanda further extends its leadership as the most comprehensive and popular open source network backup and recovery software …

Part 1 covered Network Edition backup features, today’s snips apply to all editions.

First among the lesser known additions: We recently provided the possibility for a nice performance boost to some environments by adding the ability to turn on batched indexing in ZCS 5.0.3 (you can even fine tune it at the localconfig, COS, and account level). We’re not talking about when you re-index an entire account here, this is a change to the index-as-received model; now new items can sit in a ‘queue’ (really a ‘indexing deferred’ flag on the mail_items table of the pertaining mboxgroup database in MySQL) to run all at once when it reaches the zimbraBatchedIndexingSize threshold, saving you from all the tiny disk thrashing. It might not be …

Watch for Zend, MySQL, Asterisk, PHP and Apache conferences coming to a city near you! READ MORE

I met GNU for the first time fifteen years ago. I was working as a consultant in support of a criminal investigation, and as part of my duties I had to analyze a database hosted on a SCO server.
As often happens, the database was proprietary, and it did not include any facility to analyze data. I needed to build an application to explore the data thoroughly.
Most of my working libraries were written in C, which I used in other operating systems. So I contacted SCO and asked to buy a C compiler. I was told that it would cost me quite a lot (I was prepared for that, although not for the price they told me, but since I was going to expense it, I would not care), and that it would take one month to get the software. I did not have one month at my disposal. I needed to nail down the evidence for the investigation immediately. So I started asking around. I was doing some side work for …

Can Google's Chrome reshape the Internet browser landscape? READ MORE

It’s important that for any software application good standards exist. Standards ensure a number of key considerations. Standards are necessary to enforce and provide reproducible software and to provide a level of quality in a team environment, ease of readability and consistency.

If you were going to create a MySQL Naming Standard you have to make a number of key decisions. Generally there is no true right or wrong, however my goals tend towards readability and simplicity. In 2 decades of database design I’ve actually changed my preference between some of these points.

1. Pluralism

Option 1
All database objects are defined in the logical form, that being singular.

For example: box, customer, person, category, user, order, order_line product, post, post_category

Option 2

For database tables & views, objects are defined in plural. …

As China's appetite for technological advancement through acquisition grows, will we see a global Chinese-based software vendor emerge? READ MORE

Is piracy of paid support a problem in the open source software market? READ MORE

Although the awareness of open source appears low, the lack of Internet-based apps poses an opportunity to bolster open source penetration READ MORE