Articles by Christopher Frenz

Why 'LiveCD' Should Be a Part of Every Computer User's Vocabulary

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 11:00:00 EST

Throughout the last decade, society has witnessed an explosion of network connectivity among PCs and mobile devices as well as a vast proliferation of networked applications, ranging from Web-based email to online banking. The end result of this is that network connectivity has become an almost indispensable resource for many individuals.

Your Computer's Immune System

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 16:30:00 EDT

Parallels have often been drawn between the computer security landscape and the biological world, since security threats such as computer viruses and worms can be viewed as digital incarnations of common biological threats. Similarities exist in terms of modes of reproduction as well as infection, and some research even suggests that digital threats follow the laws of evolution that predict these threats will become more sophisticated and effective as time progresses. A logical extension of this concept has always been to therefore consider the idea of computer security as a form of digital immune system, and in many regards, current security measures do in fact overlap with the protections present in biological systems.

The Open Source Advantage in Secure Application Development

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 13:00:00 EDT

The security benefits and risks of Open Source code is one of the most debated topics in information security today. The views of proponents of the Open Source model are typified by Eric Raymond's argument that Open Source software is intrinsically more secure since its open nature lets a greater number of programmers view the source code and uncover potential security threats before they're released to the wild.

Applicability of the .NET Platform to Bioinformatics Research

Tue, 25 Oct 2005 15:00:00 EDT

A current look at the field of bioinformatics will reveal that it is a field that is largely dominated by the Linux operating system, as well as by programming languages such as Perl, Python, and Java. Windows and its associated native application development platforms are not in widespread use among present-day bioinformatics practitioners. In fact, the usage of Linux and other open source technologies will likely remain the dominant platforms upon which most novel and/or large-scale bioinformatics research is conducted. Scientific computing of all types has deep-seated roots in Unix and its derivatives, and as a result is very much dependent on code bases that are written with *nix platforms in mind.

Windows for Supercomputers

Tue, 10 Aug 2004 00:00:00 EDT

In late May 2004, Microsoft made the announcement that it was considering entering the High-Performance Computing (HPC) Market, a market that has traditionally been dominated by custom-engineered Unix-based machines. In recent years, advances in technology have made possible the construction of lower-cost computing clusters that utilize off-the-shelf hardware such as Intel- and AMD-based processors. The operating system of choice for these lower-end clusters has been Linux.

Error Prevention in VS.NET

Tue, 06 Apr 2004 00:00:00 EDT

With the release of Visual Studio .NET and the structured error-handling capabilities of the .NET Framework came significant improvements in the way that VS programmers are able to capture and deal with programmatic errors. Yet these more robust abilities do not lessen the importance of one of the most time-tested means of error handling: prevention.

Demystifying Regular Expressions

Thu, 11 Mar 2004 00:00:00 EST

The ability to perform pattern-matching operations on text is a skill that is highly useful to any programmer. Whether you are creating a routine to validate data entered into a form, performing parsing and mining on data sets, or searching for sequence similarities in the human genome, chances are that the ability to construct a regular expression will be of great value to you.

Creating Mobile Controls with the Mobile Internet Toolkit

Thu, 30 Jan 2003 00:00:00 EST

The Mobile Internet Toolkit comes prepackaged with a variety of controls that address the most common mobile computing tasks. However, specialized tasks can arise that these generic controls are not powerful enough to address, or for which they simply fail to meet the requirements. In these cases it is beneficial to develop a custom control that is suited to fulfilling the required tasks.