Suffering from socially transmitted bookmarks
'I don't know why they call it del.icio.us,' the Rat recently ranted to his wife after another day of beating his head against the results of a security audit.
R. Fink | The Packet Rat: A pestilence of patches refuses to wear thin
Sure, the Rat is paranoid. But given the sheer number of new potential attack vectors on his agency's data security he finds out about every day, that paranoia is probably rational.
R. Fink | The Packet Rat: Change at Sun generates light, but how much heat?
The 'sudden' shift of Scott McNealy's job at Sun Microsystems Inc. caught few people by surprise'considering McNealy's pending departure from the CEO's chair had been run up the flagpole by Wall Street analyst Mark Stahlman.
Packet Rat | Left at the Altar
LinuxWorld has become another one of those snoring boring trade shows ever since Linux became a corporate darling (thanks to IBM and Hewlett-Packard). There are no more FreeBSD booth babes in painted-on red devil costumes, no more T-shirted and top-hatted codephreaks wandering the aisles, no one hacking into the demo servers on the show floor.
PACKET RAT: After open-source effort, Mass. CIO is out of the game
'It looks like Peter Quinn got a big pile of political nastiness in his stocking from Santa this year,' the Rat remarked to his boss recently, after reading about the Massachusetts CIO's sudden resignation.
PACKET RAT: What's in the cards for 2006? Pods are the talk of the Net
The end is near ... at least for 2005. And that means it's time for the pundits to come out of the woodwork and make their predictions. As usual, the Rat will ignore most of them.
PACKET RAT: Hidden software on Sony CDs could have you singing a sorrowful tune
As if it weren't enough that hackers and other malcontents try every day to install sneaky software on systems, the Rat and other network managers have recently discovered a new Axis of Evil to concern themselves with.
Packet Rat: For this superpower battle, sit back, relax'and keep your head down
Once upon a time, a Silicon Valley start-up company created some software that changed the Internet.
PACKET RAT: If they take your personal info but can't find it, do you really exist?
It's bad enough when an IT project goes to heck in a handbasket. But there's a special sort of sinking feeling associated with an IT project that fails spectacularly in full view of lawyers and Congress.
PACKET RAT: Not quite up to speed with RFID
Like many agencies, the Rat's domain is developing strategies to take advantage of radio frequency identification.
Packet Rat: It'll take all that glitters to make your Windows Sparkle
The Rat tuned into the chatter from his intelligence agents at the recent Microsoft Professional Developers' Conference (PDC) in the City of Angels.
Packet Rat: The pods get bigger, even as they shrink
After setting up emergency voice over IP networks and other communications gear, the Rat was all too happy to hand off his temporary relief duties in the Gulf Coast region last week and get back home to the network command bunker.
Packet Rat: In the eye of the storm, anything but calm
The Rat came home waterlogged after an emergency trip to the Gulf Coast two weeks ago.
PACKET RAT: They who control ports can keep the worms at bay
The Rat is totally mystified about how the latest class of worm managed to catch so many major organizations napping.
Will Apple-Intel alliance put PCs in play for Mac OS X?
The Rat came home from work one day recently and found his ratlings gathered gleefully around a computer. In the Rat household, that's generally a bad omen.
Packet Rat: Toon in for the latest in IT products from TV Land
'They call it what?' The Rat was examining the latest buzz-creation device issued by Apple on a recent morning and was having some difficulty getting past the name.
PACKET RAT: Pay for performance vs. the devil you know
Having narrowly avoided perishing in the private sector during the economic backwash of the Internet bubble burst, more than a few hands on the Rat's org chart are happy to be collecting a civil-service wage'if nothing else, it's a reliable pay check. But they could be in for a rude shock.
PACKET RAT: Patches in the pipeline send the Rat to the breaking point
'I'm telling you, it's a conspiracy,' the Rat grumbled on a recent Tuesday as he and his troops tested the latest tsunami of software patches to be inflicted on system administrators worldwide.
PACKET RAT: Know thyself? Not without the proper paperwork, pal
The Rat spent his 4th of July vacation doing more than flipping burgers and dogs on the family hibachi.
Packet Rat: PTO's IT budget could be the mother of all invention
So when the Rat decided to bring the wife and ratlings along to JavaOne in San Francisco, things were bound to go haywire.
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