Practical Technology

for practical people.

March 10, 2015
by sjvn01
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Why Agile and DevOps fit like a hand in a glove

Some things go great together. Bread and butter, baseball and spring, and Agile and DevOps. But since you can’t taste or easily watch Agile in DevOps, let me explain why they go together so well.

First, a quick refresher: DevOps is the practice of operations and development engineers working together using Agile for IT services from their design to production support. It’s also not some special sauce you can just add to your company and suddenly everything IT will be better. If you think that simply embracing DevOps will magically make things better, you’re indulging in Cargo Cult behavior and you’ll get no-where.

Why Agile and DevOps fit like a hand in a glove. More>

March 10, 2015
by sjvn01
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Linux adopts conflict resolution code

“If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen” could be the unofficial motto of the Linux kernel community. Over the years, there has been one conflict after another in the heart of the the Linux development community, the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML). Now, in order to make the LKML more peaceful, the group has adopted a Code of Conduct.

This title isn’t quite accurate; it’s not a code of conduct. Rather, it describes a method to resolve conflicts. It says:

Linux adopts conflict resolution code. More>

March 7, 2015
by sjvn01
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NCC Group to audit OpenSSL for security holes

OpenSSL, arguably the world’s most important Web security library with its support for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TLS) in such popular Web servers as Apache and Nginx, has had real trouble. First, there was HeartBleed and more recently there is FREAK. It’s been one serious security problem after another. Now, the NCC Group, a well-regarded security company, will be auditing OpenSSL’s code to catch errors before they appear in the wild.

NCC Group to audit OpenSSL for security holes. More>

March 6, 2015
by sjvn01
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Pulling net neutrality from a swamp of lies

On Feb. 26, the Federal Communications Commission voted, along strict party lines, to approve new net neutrality rules by reclassifying broadband as a regulated public utility. So does that save the Internet or lock it up in a bureaucratic, censored, expensive prison?

I’ve been using the Internet since the ’70s, and reporting on it since the ’80s, and in all that time I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much nonsense said about it as has been said over the past year.

Pulling net neutrality from a swamp of lies. More>

March 6, 2015
by sjvn01
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VMware sued for failure to comply with Linux license

In 2007, top Linux contributor Christoph Hellwig accused VMware of using Linux as the basis for the VMware ESX bare-metal hypervisor, an essential part of VMware’s cloud offerings.

Years went by and the Software Freedom Conservancy, a non-profit organization that promotes open-source software, claims to have negotiated with VMware for the company to release ESX’s code, and its successor ESXi. That way, argued the Software Freedom Conservancy, these programs would legally comply with Linux’s Gnu General Public License version 2 (GPLv2). VMware refused in 2014.

Now, Hellweg and the Software Freedom Conservancy are suing VMware in the district court of Hamburg in Hamburg, Germany.

VMware sued for failure to comply with Linux license. More>