Practical Technology

for practical people.

March 25, 2015
by sjvn01
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Red Hat Squid web-proxy is not deleting files willy-nilly

Yes, the bug in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.7 Squid web caching proxy is a bad one. As the Red Hat Bugzilla Bug 1202858 reads, “restarting testing build of squid results in deleting all files in hard-drive.”

I think we can all agree that’s a bad, bad bug. Soon, people were talking about it at Hacker News, numerous Reddit threads, Twitter, and on and on. Here’s the thing though: Yes, it’s a big, bad bug, but it was a bug that never came close to even beta testers, never mind Joe and Jane user.

RHEL 6.7 isn’t even in beta yet. In fact, RHEL 6.7 doesn’t even have a release date yet. This code is so fresh that if it were seafood it would still be in the ocean, never mind a fishing boat, much less your restaurant plate.

Red Hat Squid web-proxy is not deleting files willy-nilly. More>

March 23, 2015
by sjvn01
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Ted Cruz dot com: A domain name cautionary tale

On March 23rd, Texas Republican senator and Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz announced that he was going to run for president. If you then went running to his website, tedcruz.com, to see what he had to say you would have been shocked to see the message, “SUPPORT PRESIDENT OBAMA. IMMIGRATION REFORM NOW!”

Doesn’t sound like him does it?

What the heck happened? Had Cruz’s site already been hacked? Nope, it turns out that he’s never owned this site.

Ted Cruz dot com: A domain name cautionary tale. More>

March 23, 2015
by sjvn01
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Pwn2Own 2015: The year every web browser went down

Once more the major web browser vendors brought in their latest and best versions of their web browsers to CanSecWest 2015 Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia for HP Security Research and Google Project Zero‘s Pwn2Own hacking contest. This year, the hackers won.

Pwn2Own 2015: The year every web browser went down. More>

March 23, 2015
by sjvn01
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HP wants to be your cloud server provider

We’ve gotten really good at deploying virtual machines (VM). That’s a good thing because the cloud depends on VMs. But no matter how many VMs you can place on a server, at the end of the day you still need hardware.

That’s where Hewlett-Packard (HP) wants to be your friend. True, HP has its own cloud software suite, Helion. This set of programs is based on OpenStack. HP hasn’t put all its chips on OpenStack. Last fall, HP bought the open-source, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) private cloud program Eucalyptus. Then, in a shocking move, HP put Eucalyptus founder and CEO Marten Mickos in charge of its cloud operations.

I still don’t know quite what to make of HP’s  software moves. But, here’s what I do know: HP, at heart, is still a hardware company. So, regardless of where HP goes with cloud software and services, I take HP’s new inexpensive cloud server line Cloudline seriously.

HP wants to be your cloud server provider. More>

March 20, 2015
by sjvn01
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The best Chromebook ever: Google’s 2015 Pixel

I didn’t just buy Google’s new Chromebook Pixel. No, I bought the high-end model with the 5th-generation, 2.4GHz Intel Core i7-5500U processor with 16GBs of memory and a 64GB Solid State Drive (SSD) for $1,299. And, I’m not the only one. That top-of-the-line Chromebook Pixel is sold out. Why would I spend this kind of money? Because the Pixel 2015 is worth it.

The best Chromebook ever: Google’s 2015 Pixel. More>