Open-Source: The Genesis of the Internet as We Know It
In the age of information, we often take for granted our ability to open an internet browser and connect to every corner of the globe. We send off emails with the safe assumption that they will arrive at the desktop of everyone in our address book. Information flows unbounded across the internet without barriers from governments or corporations. This open internet community that we enjoy was born out of an Open-Source technology.
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What I Took Away from InfoTech 2008
Segue attended the InfoTech 2008 conference hosted by the Dayton-Wright chapter of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) 21-23 October 2008. The event was held at the Dayton Convention Center, in downtown Dayton, Ohio, in close proximity to Wright Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB). An estimated 2,500 industry professionals attended and 150 organizations exhibited at this defense/IT industry event. Read the rest of this entry »
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Improving Development Meetings
Have you ever been in a development meeting where a customer, a developer, a tester and a product manager argue for more than half the time about a single detail? How much time did you spend figuring out who was right and who was wrong? Really, the answer is nobody; they were all just looking at the same object from different perspectives. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Planning and Meetings, Quality Assurance | No Comments »
Open-Source Software’s Biggest Strength: Security
In my last article, I discussed how companies must understand and evaluate the hidden costs of implementing and maintaining open-source software. After taking these costs into account, some companies are still seeing the benefits of getting away from expensive commercial products. While the upfront costs of implementing and maintaining open-source software are high, the upkeep is much lower in comparison to closed-source alternatives.
In this article, I will discuss one of the biggest advantages of choosing open-source software: Security. Whether you’re counting votes or tracking shipments, security is one of the most important factors you must address before and after you install any type of software. Security requirements often differ depending on application and field, but will inevitably require an investment of money, time, and resources; it’s an unavoidable cost of doing business today. Maintaining closed source software can waste man-hours as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars. This cost, however, can be hedged when open source software is part of the equation.
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Small Helpdesk Team Scheduling
One of the biggest challenges in staffing and operating a small helpdesk is maintaining a fair and balanced schedule. It must be written without bias and in such a way that everyone performs equal work. For purposes of this article, I define a small helpdesk as one where: 1) There is either no on-site supervisor or the supervisor functions as a team lead with responsibilities in addition to those of the other agents and 2) All agents share the same basic duties.
Posted in Network Engineering, Planning and Meetings | No Comments »
Secure File Downloads Using ColdFusion 7
It is occasionally necessary to control who can download a file. The typical method of doing this in a web application is to store the file somewhere outside of the document root and use an application server to process the request and output the file. Under ColdFusion, this is normally done with a combination of the <cfcontent> tag to reset page output and programmatically send the file, and the <cfheader> tag to set HTTP headers like Cache-Control and Content-Disposition.
You will usually use something like this to send an Excel spreadsheet and ask the browser to open it:
<cfcontent type="application" reset="true" file="c:\myfile.xls" type="application/vnd.ms-excel">
<cfheader name="Content-Disposition" value="inline; filename="myfile.xls">
For the most part, this solution works pretty well. However, there are two issues that crop up with this approach: Memory usage, and threads.
Posted in ColdFusion, Website Development | No Comments »
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