Cardbox

Cardbox is a flat-file database with exceptionally powerful text indexing facilities.  It is fast, versatile and easy to use, and it has been going in one form or another since 1980.  It is used by everyone from individuals, through academic institutions and companies of all sizes, to multinational and supranational organisations.

If you have not come across Cardbox before, go to its web site and try it out.  It will be a liberation.

Self-splicing software and molecular genetics

Overdrive and Ultralock were two utilities for MSDOS that we wrote and marketed in the late 1980s.  They used a novel technique to splice themselves into the operating system that they were enhancing, which has interesting resemblances to the techniques of genetic engineering.  Since it is also a technique that virus writers may start to use in the future, it is worth taking it into account when planning security precautions.

S3 in Business

Amazon S3 is a simple storage system for the Internet. You can store gigabytes of information - terabytes, even - at low cost and with no worries about backup. It makes new kinds of business possible; but it also brings a new set of worries about business stability, contracts, and the law.

This article was originally a series of blog entries but is now published as a single piece.