When choosing an integrated development environment, prefer lumberjacks to magicians

By Sean McGrath, ITworld

There are two types of integrated development environments (IDE) in the world, which is convenient, because there are two types of developers in the world. To make things even more symmetrical and just super peachy, there are two types of opinions about IDEs in the world -- those that make grand generalizations and make everything look nice and binary and those that do not. ...continue reading 'When choosing an integrated development environment, prefer lumberjacks to magicians'

3 lessons CIOs can learn from successful politicians

Matt Eventoff, PPS Associates

CIOs do not often look to politics for examples of better ways to run their IT organizations, but there are lessons to be learned. Let's begin with three rules that work well for politicians that may help CIOs operate more effectively within their IT organization and within the larger confines of their company. ...continue reading '3 lessons CIOs can learn from successful politicians'

Windows Tip: Tools for testing for bad memory

Mitch Tulloch, ITworld.com

I recently upgraded memory in half a dozen of our office systems, and of course I had problems: two of the machines wouldn't boot afterward. I ran some memory tests on them but without results. So I ended up following the Monte Carlo approach, which in my case involved randomly swapping memory between the two machines to see what happens. Eventually I got both of them working, but it got me wondering if there are better tools available for testing memory integrity. ...continue reading 'Tools for testing for bad memory'

Unix Tip: Using SCAT (Solaris CAT) for analyzing crash dumps

Sandra Henry-Stocker, ITworld.com

Want to do something with those crash dump files other than remove them? Want to extract some useful information without a lot of work? Take a look at Sun's free crash analysis tool, scat. ...continue reading 'Using SCAT (Solaris CAT) for analyzing crash dumps'

Unix Sleuthing: One problem leads to another

By Sandra Henry-Stocker, ITworld.com

When tracking down an unusual problem on a Unix system, you may encounter many turns and dead ends on the path toward the solution as some problems may have little connection to what first appears to be troubling your system. This is such a tale. ...continue reading 'Unix Sleuthing: One problem leads to another'

Managing Remote Desktop settings on a remote computer

By Mitch Tulloch, ITworld.com

An article I wrote almost four years ago about remotely enabling Remote Desktop on a Windows Server 2003 machine is still generating a lot of discussion. One reader recently shared a script he wrote that takes the ideas in my article one step further. His company has a corporate policy in place that says remote desktop should be disabled by default on all Windows computers. So he wrote a simple script that he could use to remotely enable Remote Desktop, perform his work on the remote machine, and then disable Remote Desktop again easily. ...continue reading 'Managing Remote Desktop settings on a remote computer'

Customizing your default Outlook template

Mitch Tulloch, ITworld.com

You can customize the default formatting of your Outlook messages by specifying margins, setting tabs, configuring line spacing, and more, and then applying your changes to the Normal template for Outlook messages. Here's how in 7 steps. ...continue reading 'Customizing your default Outlook template'

Facing tough times may be here to stay

Joel Shore, ITworld.com

With the economy going south, what's an integrator to do? Consider the tactic used by the IBM of old, in the mainframe era, before PCs had even been dreamed up. When MIS (we didn't call it IT back then) spending declined, the company put more salespeople on the street, not fewer. ...continue reading 'Facing tough times may be here to stay'

Dot What!? sites for file extensions

By Sandra Henry-Stocker, ITworld.com

With nearly 9,000 file extensions listed and 50 users browsing the site on a Saturday night, the Dot What!? claims to be the net's #1 file extension website. It offers visitors an opportunity to suggest additional file extensions and to add comments concerning their uses and associations. While writing this column, I suggested .pl, an extension sometimes used for Perl scripts, and offered explanations for .cgi extensions. A review by a member of the Dot What!? team is necessary before updates and changes are posted. ...continue reading 'Dot What!? sites for file extensions'

How to think big by thinking small

By Sean McGrath

Computer programming logic is easy really. It all boils down to endless variations of the following pseudo-English constructs: do | if | while. That's it. Nothing else to it. Granted, there are a million and one ways to express all three of these. There are also a million and one poetically beautiful ways to creating new language constructs that hide the do/if/while stuff from direct view. But, when it is all boiled down, it is just do/if/while in endless permutations and combinations. ...continue reading 'How to think big by thinking small'

Windows Tip: Creating template emails for Outlook 2007

By Mitch Tulloch

If you work in an organization and use Outlook, you'll often find yourself sending the same types of emails, with variations, again and again. Examples of this might include memos, press announcements, expense reports, and so on. How can you avoid having to type the same information again and again when you do this? A friendly geek made my life easier by showing me how to create an email template in Outlook 2007, and now I have a bunch of them on my system and they save me tons of time. Here's what I did: ...continue reading 'Windows Tip: Creating template emails for Outlook 2007'