The weather outside is frightful, so if you’ve no place to go, download the latest podcast from CSTechcast.com. This week we talk the open source option and why it makes sense for your operations with Curt Finch, CEO of JourneyX and author of All Your Money Won't Another Minute Buy: Valuing Time as a Business Resource. In the news, IE8 is winning the war to have the least bugs, new patches for critical vulnerabilities released after Patch Tuesday, the .tel domain aims to make it easy to share contact information, Sun retires Network.com and launches a new cloud initiative, and version 5.1 of MySQL is released debuting several new features. Sony and Facebook get dissed for their collection of private data in “The Worst Tech Move of the Week”, people who put desktop in service as servers get the wrath of “The IT Pet Peeve”, and a little tip to help get your Hyper-V machines shut down cleanly in “The Weekly Tech Tip”.

Our sponsor this week: Admin Script Editor by iTripoli.

Links to stories and sites discussed during the show:
Internet Explorer Has Fewer Software Bugs Than Firefox, Chrome (InformationWeek)
Zero-Day Microsoft Vulnerabilities Being Exploited (InformationWeek)
Microsoft Security Advisory (960906) (Microsoft.com)
.Tel Them Where to Find You (New York Times)
Sun Discloses Plans To Enter Cloud Computing (InformationWeek)
Sun MySQL 5.1 Upgrades Partitioning, Replication (InformationWeek)
Sony Violates Children's Privacy Act (Washington Post)

Keep the holiday cheer coming, with feedback at our website and interaction on Twitter and Friendfeed. Don't forget us, get us a present by getting your friends to CSTechcast.com for the podcast for IT pros by IT pros.

Link to the episode: http://www.cstechcast.com/home.aspx?Episode=54

- Eric Beehler (consortioservices.com/blog)

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CSTechcast.com, your weekly source for tech, trends, news, and reviews for IT pros presents the latest episode of our podcast. Rhonda Layfield joins the fray to update us on the extensive deployment tools available for the Microsoft Windows platform. Find Rhonda contributing to the web site Minasi.com. Tech news brings everyone early exposure to the DNS flaw, VMWare decides to give away the ESXi hypervisor, Drizzle aims to slim down MySQL, the Brocade-Foundry marriage merges Fibre-SAN switching with 10G Ethernet expertise, and Terry Childs finally gives up the goods. Quick selling VC's are investing in "The Worst Tech Move of the Week", we take "A Closer Look" at virtualization sprawl, and we look at SharePoint disaster recovery in "The Weekly Tech Tip".

Links to stories discussed during the show:
New DNS exploit now in the wild and having a blast (ArsTechnica)
VMware Counters Microsoft, Will Make ESXi Hypervisor Free (InformationWeek)
Drizzle project plans a stripped-down MySQL (InfoWorld)
Dissecting the Brocade-Foundry Merger (eWeek)
SF mayor gets codes to hijacked city network (CNet News.com)
VCs Reap What They Sow (Gigaom)
The Silicon Valley VC Disease (Scobleizer)

Give us some feedback and win a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate. We really want to know what you think. Contact us from the feedback button, e-mail us, and post to the blog all at CSTechcast.com. Also find us micro-blogging at twitter.com/cstechcast and friendfeed.com/cstechcast. Subscribe so you never miss an episode.

Link to the episode: http://www.cstechcast.com/home.aspx?Episode=35

- Eric Beehler (consortioservices.com/blog)

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A special episode at cstechcast.com this week as we record our podcast live from PASS Camp. This keynote address features an expert panel to explore the upcoming SQL Server 2008 database release with questions on features, technology, and strategy for our panel. Featured on our panel are Paul Nielsen - Microsoft SQL Server MVP and author of the “SQL Server Bible” book series (SqlServerBible.com), Kevin Cox – member of the SQL Server Product Group in the Customer Advisory Team at Microsoft (sqlcat.com), and Ben Hoelting - a .NET developer with Colorado Technology Consultants (benhblog.com). Of course, we also have our own co-hosts contribute; Eric Johnson, Microsoft SQL Server MVP, and Josh Jones, published author on many SQL topics. Author and co-host of the podcast Eric Beehler moderates the discussion. We are offering a video version of this episode as well; check it out at cstechcast.com.

Detailed topics include the delay of the official launch and it's effect on the market and its supporters. We also discuss SQL Server 2008 in the enterprise and how it takes on its biggest competitors, IBM and Oracle. On the flip side, we discuss perhaps the smallest competitor, mySQL, and what SQL Server is doing to stay small business friendly. Attendees bring up questions on horizontal scalability and data modeling tools. We get into it with new developer feature LINQ and the possible consequences to proper database management. We also get a read on the panelist's favorite new features of SQL 2008.

We would like to thank Quest Software for allowing us to bring you this event through their sponsorship of this episode. Find out how they can help you with their suite of database management solutions at quest.com.

Don't forget our drive to find new listeners through our Amazon.com gift certificate giveaway. Go to cstechcast.com and "refer-a-friend". Leave your comments at this blog post and thanks for listening.

Link to CS Techcast Episode 15 podcast: http://www.cstechcast.com/home.aspx?Episode=15

- Eric Beehler (consortioservices.com/blog)

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Back, once again, with notable news and discussion at cstechcast.com. We talk with Microsoft MVP Brandon Shell this week, about the PowerShell scripting tool. You can find his blog at bsonposh.com. In the news, MySQL claimed by Sun and Oracle brings home BEA, Oracle patches and admin's lack thereof, EMC goes SSD, and a Macbook out of thin Air. The "Worst Tech Move of the Week", "Weekly Tech Tip", and "Meet Your Local User Group" segments round out the half hour.

Show Notes

Links to the stories discussed in our podcast:
http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/apple-macbook-air-1/4505-3121_7-32818756.html?tag=nefdprod.rev
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Storage/EMC-Breaks-New-Ground-with-SSDs-in-Storage-Arrays/
http://www.sentrigo.com/press_releases-newsid-39.htm
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/141412/oracle_releases_security_patch.html
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141409-pg,1/article.html
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=205800904&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All

Featured User Group

The Boulder SQL Users Group in Colorado is in the spotlight this week. Check them out, in person, every month and visit the website at boulder.sqlgroups.com to find all the detail. They are a part of the Colorado PASS Camp as well, a collaborative effort between the front range SQL users groups to bring training for free to their members.

If you like us, put a link to cstechcast.com on your blog or web site. Comments about the episode are welcome at this blog post. Thanks.
- Eric Beehler (consortioservices.com/blog)

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