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ITWire: Imagine standing on the road. An oncoming car is heading rapidly towards you. You have a choice to move, or to stay. Now consider that in business you need to choose a server platform wisely but often Windows shops become entrenched because it is the status quo. Here’s why you ought to think about it more.

Today I took (and passed!) Microsoft exam 70-529, Technical Specialist: Distributed application development in the .NET framework.

 One thing I hadn’t seen before is that the exam commenced by prompting the programming language I wanted to work with. Nice touch.

ITWire: Over the last week the Linux Distillery blog has been covering how the Linux multitasking scheduler works. Now it’s time to see what Linux has in common with popular horror flicks: this story has it all – zombies and zombie children, and a reaper.

ITWire: Linux is a multi-tasking system. How does it know when to switch a process in and out so everyone gets equal share? And what can you do to tweak your system to be more responsive or to use less power? The answer to all these is wrapped up in just what it means to do something in a jiffy.

Wow! One thing that many people have pressed for over time is open file formats. In a lot of ways this argument is more important to governments and large organisations than any debate over proprietary vs open source software.

Having an open file format means historical data will never be lost just because a chosen software package becomes abandoned by its vendors. Having an open file format means you can opt to use Microsoft Word if you believe it offers a familiar and rich user interface for millions of non-technical computer users. Or, you can opt to use Open Office if you believe it gives you greater choices, not to mention it costs nothing.

Microsoft have obviously listened to this; firstly the Open Office XML specification as used by Office 2007 has been published since the beginning but now Microsoft have made public the binary file formats as used by previous versions of Office.

These are obviously fascinating to developers like myself, but very quickly prove to be complex. Joel Spolsky provides interesting commentary as to how the Microsoft Office file specifications evolved.

ITWire: One distinction between the genders, allegedly, is the ability to multitask. Now, depending on who you speak to either women possess this or men do but I’m not bold enough to join that debate. What I can tell you, however, is that Linux definitely does. And, in fact, many systems may not be taking full advantage of it. Here’s why.

ITWire: It’s St Valentine’s Day in much of the western world (and, it seems, the World of Warcraft too). Did you know Linux is unique among operating systems due to its inherent romanticism? Here’s how Linux helps sling forth Cupid’s arrows on this day. Spice up your love life with these seven sure-fire tips.

ITWire: Open source software advocates – like myself – will point out that a user can have confidence in the application’s integrity because the program code is readily viewable. However, not everyone who reads source code has pure intentions. Here’s how MySQL has been cracked in the past, and how you can keep safe.

ITWire: Forget vampires, there’s a world of evil in corporations across the globe infesting desktops everywhere. It’s the database product known as Microsoft Access but fear not: there is a chosen one, the [Silicon] Valley open source software revolution born with special strength and a destiny to fight Access.

Access must die, and here’s why as well as three top quality open source databases to do the job.

Just a reminder that the first meeting for the Newcastle Coders’ Group 2008 is on tomorrow evening.

Date: 6.00pm Wednesday 6th February 2008
Location: Forsythes IT Training Room – 9 Denison Street, Newcastle West
Cost: FREE!

This month Yi Su will be talking to us about the Spring framework. Having originated in Java the Spring and Spring.NET framework is an open source application framework that makes building enterprise applications easier.

Don’t forget to RSVP if you’ll be attending so that we can plan for numbers.

See you there!