Paul Murphy Resources on ZDNet

ZDNet Author Biography: Originally a Math/Physics graduate who couldn't cut it in his own field, Paul Murphy (a pseudonym) became an IT consultant specializing in Unix and related technologies after a stint working for a DARPA contractor programming in Fortran and APL. Since then he's worked in both systems management and...; more about Paul Murphy »

ZDNet Resources

A brief summary: This is not an excerpt from Brief - those ended last week, and next week we'll start the long and boring slog through the second volume in the series: Business Information Technology: Foundations and Culture. Its purpose, where Brief is addressed to top level executives and Defen is intended for...; Tags: Information Technology, MySQL, Jonathan Schwartz, Open Source, Databases, Strategy, Enterprise Software, Software, Data Management, Management, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-05-09
An idea about teaching Linux to the MCSE community: Frequent contributor Roger Ramjet has a bit of a bee in his bonnet about path and naming standardization across a multi-vendor distributed Unix architecture. If I understand him correctly, he believes that it's both possible and sensible to build what amounts to a standardization harness - a set of scripts...; Tags: MCSE, Standardization, Linux, UNIX, Operating Systems, Strategic Planning, Open Source, Software, Strategy, Management, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-05-08
Why many MCSEs won't learn Linux: Here's the entirety of a note by discussion contributor nhudd responding to my e-mail exchange with "MCSE Mike": On behalf of MCSE Mike's everywhere... Paul, I think that the vast majority of techs/geeks out there can relate to MCSE Mike's question at the top...; Tags: MCSE, Newcomer, Nathan, Linux, UNIX, Operating Systems, Open Source, Software, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-05-07
Sometimes it takes a thousand words: Once upon a time... I spent about three months working nearly full time with five juniors putting together a set of interlocking business process and applications models for a client. The results were beautiful: three fat binders filled with wonderfully clear IEW drawings lovingly printed on a QMS Color laser...; Tags: Client, Mathematics, Modeling, Research & Development, Team Management, Business Operations, Management, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-05-06
N-Tier: Rube Goldberg meets Wintel Scalability: The core claim made by N-tier architecture proponents is that this structure breaks an application into modular elements that can be separately maintained and used for more than one application. In the simplest possible version of this you have at least one database server, at least one...; Tags: Wintel, Client-server, PC, Application Server, Desktop Computer, Storage, Desktops, Databases, Servers, Hardware, Enterprise Software, Software, Data Management, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-05-05

Effect on Yahoo will be debilitating: In part one of this comment (Febuary 2/08 ) I said: Some mergers are defensive, some are driven by competitive opportunity, and others largely by management egos and investment bankers hooking for commissions. This seems to be one of the latter: Yahoo was over valued relative to its...; Tags: Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp., Heads, Mergers & Acquisitions, Corporate Governance, Free Trade, Financial Accounting, Sales Force Management, Investment, Finance, Business Operations, Corporate Law, Sales, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-05-04
Questioning IT: This is the 16th excerpt from the first book in the Defen series: The Board Member's IT Brief. This section is concerned with things you should talk to your CIO about - informally, but with attention. Topic Two: Maintaining Information Integrity Mainframe and Client-Server Architectures...; Tags: CIO, PC, Information Technology, Malware, Spyware, Adware & Malware, Cyberthreats, Mainframes, Security, Desktops, Viruses And Worms, Servers, Hardware, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-05-02
A personal denial of service attack: About two weeks ago my mail system started getting a lot of reject and return messages pertaining to email being sent out with murph at winface as the return address. None of that actually originated here, of course, but by last Sunday volumes were up to about a two hundred...; Tags: Denial Of Service, Network, Linux, E-mail, UNIX, Operating Systems, Open Source, Networking, Security, Software, Online Communications, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-05-01
Using mail for phishing: The standard phishing scams still catch enough people to justify the small costs and low risks involved - but there's a better way. From the bad guy's perspective traditional phishing has costs and benefits. On the cost side there's a few hundred dollars to get a million...; Tags: Phishing, Cyberthreats, Spam, Viruses And Worms, Security, Spam And Phishing, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-05-01
Why client-server fails: The client-server idea goes back at least to the early 1960s and was, at least initially, a fairly direct extension of hardware co-processor ideas already in wide use throughout the industry. Thus the vision going into the IBM Future Systems project in 1968 was simple: build future...; Tags: Client-server, Client-server Idea, Serialization Problem, E-voting, Servers, Government, Hardware, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-04-29
RPG, PHP, and history: While thinking through some of the comments recorded here as part of our discussion of development languages and environments I finally figured out what PHP reminds me of: RPG. RPG [Report generator] started out in the IBM 360 world as a report formatting aid, but never really...; Tags: Application, PHP, IBM Corp., Codd, Productivity, Programming Languages, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-04-28
Betting that Apple will make PPC laptops again: But you won't be able to buy one any time soon. Apple says it bought P.A. Semi to get its hands on some patents and a bunch of very bright engineers who are already used to working together. I'm sure that's true - but...; Tags: Dual-core, Apple Inc., U.S. Department Of Defense, Laptop Computer, Chip, PPC, Robots, Corporate Governance, Processors, Semiconductors, Emerging Technologies, Business Operations, Corporate Law, Hardware, Components, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-04-26
The view from stupid: It's my belief that all of us have a general responsibility to correct public falsehoods and act against both real and perceived injustices. In its application to IT what I think this means is that we - you, me, everyone - have a duty to correct mis-information when we see...; Tags: Microsoft Windows Server, Kind, Microsoft Windows, Internet, Processors, Servers, Operating Systems, Software, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-04-24
Umm, Yummy: Mactel eats Lintel's desktop: Red Hat recently issued a press release under the title What's Going On With Red Hat Desktop Systems? An Update whose content boiled down to "It's a loser, so We're bailing." Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is a cool two year old product from a...; Tags: Linux Desktop, Microsoft Windows Vista, Ubantu, Microsoft Windows, Linux, Operating Systems, Apple Mac OS, Microsoft Windows Vista (Longhorn), Open Source, Desktops, UNIX, Software, Hardware, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-04-23
Shock! Dog bites postman! Mainframer attacks Linux to push AIX: Once upon a time I did a few articles for searchenterpriselinux at techtarget.com, but we parted ways very quickly over their commitment to Red Hat's anti-Sun marketing strategy. Ken Milberg, a guy I think I first ran into in the context of my original 2002...; Tags: Operating System, Sun Microsystems Inc., IBM AIX, Duck, IBM Corp., Attack, Linux, UNIX, Operating Systems, Open Source, Software, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-04-22
Is OOP a branch to nowhere?: To continue the discussion about development languages, I want to ask a potentially embarrassing question: has the whole object orientation business been both a functional and a conceptual failure? One of the odd things about the OO movement is that no two proponents understand...; Tags: Object-oriented Programming, Object-oriented, Machine, COBOL MOVE, Ooa/Ood/Oop, Software Development, Software/Web Development, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-04-20
Mac Clones and Psystar: Back in August of 2006 I outlined a business plan for a guy in California who wanted to go after the PPC market Apple was then abandoning. There were three keys to my plan: a manufacturing and sales partnership with a major defence contractor; a commitment from Freescale...; Tags: Apple Macintosh, Apple Inc., Hardware, Data General, Apple Mac OS, Operating Systems, Software, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-04-19
Questioning IT: Questioning IT This is the 14th excerpt from the first book in the Defen series: The Board Member's IT Brief. This section is concerned with things you should talk to your CIO about - informally, but with attention. Topic one: disaster avoidance Basically...; Tags: CIO, Data Center, Information Technology, Credit Card, Clustering, Membership Database, Data Centers, Backups, Storage, Servers, Hardware, Data Management, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-04-18
Is IT abuse a threat to democracy?: Here's a bit from a Washington Post report dated Dec 22/07 and headlined "FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics": CLARKSBURG, W. Va. -- The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would...; Tags: Database, Information Technology, FBI, Ballot, Catalist, Federal Government, Government, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-04-17
Hardware comparability in benchmark comparisons: Last week's discussions under my "purloined benchmark" title included this bit from ShadeTree: if you are comparing OS performance.... ... and you are not using the same hardware You cannot tell if the performance is related to the software or is merely a reflection...; Tags: Performance, Operating System, Linux, Operating Systems, Microsoft Windows, UNIX, Open Source, Servers, Software, Hardware, Paul Murphy; Blog posts 2008-04-17