The difference between quality assurance (QA) and testing is often misunderstood. In fact, the terms are frequently used interchangeably. However, testing is actually just one part of QA. Quality assurance, on the other hand, covers a larger, more holistic part of the...
Software Development & Release Management
Deploying IPv6 on a Cisco IOS router with a Tunnel Broker
The time has finally come! Just a few days ago, major internet companies participated in IPv6 Launch Day – meaning from this point forward, they will be running their production systems and making their services available to you via the IPv6 in addition to IPv4....
LinkedIn Password Database Leaked!
LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, has reported that its user database has been hacked and the encrypted passwords of 6+ million users have been stolen. Even though the password database was encrypted, users with weak passwords could be exposed with...
A Six Step Setup Process for Incorporating CSS and jQuery into Your Electric Commander Plugin
Let's suppose you've been tasked with developing a custom dashboard for your Electric Commander installation to show off some real-time stats about your software development process. If you read my previous article about displaying Commander metrics in a GWT...
How a Disaster Turned out to be an Opportunity
This post started out as a discussion of how Clonezilla made my life easy and Acronis made my life hard, but it quickly morphed into something different and more personal. Hopefully someone can take away from this that disasters can be quite bad when they happen, but they can also set you on a path you didn’t expect that may end up being wonderful.
Gain Greater Control Over Windows Disk Defragmentation with Defraggler
This week we have a look at an alternative to Windows Disk Defragmenter. Piriform has a number of Windows utility offerings, among which is Defraggler. Defraggler has the following capabilities, a number of which are not available with the Windows default utility. 1....
Outsource Your System Administration to Set Your Engineers Free
The inquisitive nature of engineers, which makes them so good at designing, developing and building products, can also lead them to become distracted by other “interesting things” like managing the very systems and tools that allow them to do their engineering....
SDLC Basics: The Vision Statement
In the Beginning In the beginning, there was an idea. The idea took shape and became a project. The project became an application and the application got used. Or maybe it didn't get used. Maybe it was completely the wrong application for the business. Or maybe it was...
Creating a Custom Nagios Plugin
Nagios is an invaluable tool to help monitor a customer's infrastructure. Last year, I explained how easy it was to be able to integrate Network Appliance health checks. In fact, Nagios provides a plethora of out of the box plugins. Additional plugins are available...
Incorporating Accessibility Into Your Software Engineering Projects
Are you missing out on reaching 25% of the US population with your current software engineering project? Maybe the elderly, at 13% of the population, aren't part of your target market, or maybe it's the 12% of the US population who are disabled that you aren't...
How to Obtain Electric Commander Metrics for Use in a GWT Plugin
Developed by Electric Cloud, Electric Commander is an extremely versatile tool for enhancing and automating your organization’s software development build-test-deploy cycle. Commander makes it possible to eliminate unnecessary lag time between phases of the...
Get Insight Into Your Misbehaving Laptop With Three Free Tools
Get insight into your laptop’s status and taking some precautions with CPUID’s Hardware Monitor and CPU-Z and Belarc Advisor It happens to most laptops eventually. After two or more years of heavy (ab)use, most of our laptops are not in the condition they were...