September 12, 2011
by sjvn01
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You can argue about which specific date is Linux’s official birthday. Heck, even Linus Torvalds thinks there are four different dates in 1991 that might deserve the honor of being the operating system’s birthday. Be that as it may, Linux is twenty years so let’s take a walk though time with Linux at some of its high, and low, points.
September 11, 2011
by sjvn01
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When the Twin Towers came down on 9/11, we talked with each other, one-to-one, over the Internet. Today, thanks to the rise of social networks, we share the news of disasters around the world with everyone in our circles. Our pain is becoming flat.
What do I mean by that? When Thomas Friedman wrote The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, he described how global telecommunications and the Internet flattened international competition and turned globalization from an economic buzz word to a reality. In the 21st century’s flat world even the most local of businesses are connected with other businesses around the world and must co-operate and compete with them.
I see another side of that concept in the rise of social networks like Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. Just as we now share information and compete with each other in milliseconds over the Internet, we now share our pain and our happiness around the world in mere moments.
On September 11th, on the Internet we came together as individually. We spoke to the people who were closest and dearest to us. We also talked to those strangers, our neighbors. The people we’d nod at as we left for work in the morning.
Today, thanks to social networks, those neighbors are co-workers from half-way around the world. They’re high-school friends we haven’t seen in decades and who’ve moved thousands of miles away from where we grew up together. Our neighborhood has become the world.
More >
September 9, 2011
by sjvn01
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If you run a business, even if it’s just out of your living room and the closest coffee shop, there are times you need Internet privacy. That’s where Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) come in.
You know the story. You’re on a business trip, and the report needs to be updated before you get back to the office. Or, you just went out to lunch when you get an urgent e-mail question from the CEO that needs to be answered Right Now. Yes, you could just send the accounts payable spreadsheet or the “Yes, we have to fire him” e-mail through an open Wi-Fi connection, but you’d be a fool to do so.
If what you’re sending over the Internet has business value, you need to send it over a secure connection. It’s that simple.
Fortunately, in a small office or home office (SOHO) you have many ways to set up a VPN. Among the options are VPN subscription services, built-in VPNs with your existing server software stack, open source software, and built-in VPN functionality in your business’ router.
September 9, 2011
by sjvn01
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This has not been a good month for the Internet’s core address system: the Domain Name System (DNS). First, there was a man-in-the-middle attack on numerous Web site users caused by a Turkish cracker. Now, according to Microsoft, many of its online services were disabled by a DNS failure.
At first, some people thought this collapse of Office 365, Hotmail, SkyDrive, and other Windows Live programs might be due to problems with Windows Azure cloud or other Windows server problems. It quickly became apparent though that it was a DNS problem.
Microsoft’s senior vice president for Windows Live, Chris Jones, has been keeping users up to date on how the company is handling the problem on the Inside Windows Live blog. By 12:45 AM Eastern time, Jones reported that “We believe we have restored service for all customers at this time. We will continue our investigation into the root cause of these issues and post an update following our investigation. Again we appreciate your patience and apologize for the inconvenience.”
While an easy fix, it wasn’t an instant fix. At that time, Microsoft had only corrected its DNS problem with their master DNS servers.
September 8, 2011
by sjvn01
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Recently, some people were shocked-shocked I tell you-to discover that Google had looked at Java to help create Android’s Dalvik and that Google kept its Android source code to itself and its closest partners until the final product was released to the public. Oh please. There’s nothing new here. It’s always been that way and everyone who knows anything about Android’s history already knew that.
First, there’s the accusation that Android used Java code in creating its Dalvik virtual machine (VM). This is news? When Android first came out, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz, then Java’s owner, greeted the news of Android’s birth with “heartfelt congratulations.”
Oh, by the way, anyone could look, use, and, yes, copy Java’s code too. You see, Sun had open-sourced Java under the GPLv2 in November 2006. Sun wanted Google and anyone else to use and copy its code. That’s kind of the whole point of open-sourcing a program don’t you know.
So there you have it. From day one Android was using Java. I knew that. Sun knew that. Anyone who ever developed in Android knew that.
September 7, 2011
by sjvn01
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Let me say this straight out: I think Carol Bartz was a great CEO. She worked miracles at Autodesk. Bartz took a company headed straight to hell and transformed it into a profitable giant. At Autodesk, though, she had a free hand to set the company’s course. At Yahoo, her hands were tied with a lousy board of directors who had already set a strategic course that pointed Yahoo straight at the rocks. Bartz was doomed from the start.
Look at the record. Bartz made multiple smart moves to get Yahoo back on track, but the company was already sinking underneath her. Frankly, I blame Yahoo’s stick-in-the-mud board. As my old-friend Charlie Cooper put it, “With a board of directors as incompetent as this one, even the most talented CEO would be hard pressed to engineer a Yahoo turnaround.” Amen.
Let’s take the way-back machine to Yahoo 2009 shall we? Yahoo has beaten back a hostile takeover attempt by Microsoft, knocked back a related proxy fight with Carl Icahn, many of its best executives have left and it has a failed AdSense/search deal with Google to its “credit.”
When I say “hostile” by the way I meant that then Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang thought Microsoft’s $47 billion offer was “substantially undervalued.” Let me check, yes, a bit more than two years later, Yahoo’s market-cap is $17.1 billion. Great job Yang!