Practical Technology

for practical people.

December 14, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Who Google has in mind for its Chrome OS users

Google isn’t telling me any secrets about its plans for Chrome OS. Indeed, I don’t even have one of the 60,000 or so people that Google has given a Cr-48 Chromebook prototype to play with. Even so, unlike my good friend Mary Jo Foley, I think I know exactly who Google has in mind for its Chrome OS Linux desktop system.

I see Google as targeting two different, very different, audiences with Chrome OS. The first group are office workers. The other is those hundreds of millions, perhaps a billion plus, users who really don’t know the first thing about to use a computer safely even as they use them every day.

In this set-up, a company would pay Google a fee, just as some do now for Google Apps for Business. In return, the company gets the 21st century version of a thin-client desktop.

More >

December 14, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

How to try to stop DDoS Attacks

Happy holidays! Your Web server just died! I use the word ‘try’ very deliberately in my title. The truth of the matter is that there isn’t a damn thing you can do that will stop a serious distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. There are though some ways to try to deal with them.

Mind you, there is actually is a way that would put an end to most DDoS attacks. It requires that all Windows-based botnets be ripped out by the roots. Too bad, that’s not going to happen.

Windows is insecure by design and used by hundreds of millions and many of those users wouldn’t know an anti-virus program from Angry Birds. Millions of Windows computers, including maybe yours, are slave labor in one of the various botnets. Since we’re not going to be rid of Windows anytime soon and it’s not going to get any safer, the reality is that botnet-powered, brute-force DDoS attacks are only going to continue.

Actually, that’s not true. I think DDoS attacks are actually going more and more often. Here are some ways to mitigate them.

More >

December 13, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Who uses Linux and Open Source in Business?

Thanks to Glyn Moody, a UK-based technology journalist, I’ve just learned that Netflix is not only using, but also contributing, to numerous open-source projects. They’re in good company.

As Kevin McEntee, Netflix’s VP of Systems & ECommerce Engineering explained on a recent blog posting, Why we use and contribute to open source software, “Our budget, measured in dollars, time, people, and energy, is limited and we must therefore focus our technology development efforts on that streaming video software that clearly differentiates Netflix and creates delight for our customers. These limits require that we stand on the shoulders of giants who have solved technology challenges shared in common by all companies that operate at Internet scale. I’m really just articulating the classical build vs. buy trade off that everyone deals with when developing software.

More >

December 10, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

Don’t hand over your own personal WikiLeaks to Strangers

When I first heard about a prominent journalist’s review smartphone, with all its information intact, dropping into the lap of a friend, I thought it was funnier than anything else.

I have a dark sense of humor. But, then I started thinking about it. Yes, it’s funny that even people who should know better flunk at information security 101, but he’s far from alone. As I talked with my fellow journalists, I heard story after story of people getting review PCs, smartphones, and the like with all the previous user’s information still intact.

Don’t start feeling smug though about how smarty-pants journalists aren’t really that smart. I called a couple of local computer recyclers, and they told me that 70% of the old PCs they get arrive at their door with the previous user’s personal and business data just sitting there.

Whoops.

More >

December 9, 2010
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Apache is being forced into a Java Fork

Everyone who follows Java knew that the Apache Software Foundation was going to resign from its nominal Java Community Process leadership position. Apache had given fair-warning that it was not going to rubber-stamp Oracle’s Java plans in November. Then, when Oracle rolled over Apache and Google’s objections to its Java plans in December, the scene was set for Apache to leave and, eventually, force a Java code fork.

There’s a long story behind why Apache, a four-time JCP “Member of the Year” is going with its own Java-related plans. The story actually doesn’t start with Oracle, but with how Sun handled the “open-sourcing” of Java in 2006.

The problem’s core is that first Sun, and now Oracle, won’t give Apache a chance to certify Apache’s Project Harmony as being Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE) compliant. Today, well, let’s let Apache speak for itself from its public statement:


More >

December 9, 2010
by sjvn01
0 comments

DDoS: How to take WikiLeaks, MasterCard or any other Web-site Down

I can’t tell you who’s attacked first WikiLeaks and more recently MasterCard, PayPal, and Visa with Distributed Denial of service (DDoS) assaults , but I can tell you it wasn’t hard. It wasn’t even, as such things go, that bad. Just ask Google if you want to know what a real DDoS attack is like.

WikiLeaks was buried under attacks that threw up to 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) at its servers. We don’t know exactly how hard MasterCard or Visa were hit, but at an educated guess, it was probably an order of magnitude worse. Few sites can handle that level of cyber-warfare.

What’s behind these attacks? People tend to think of DDoS as causing havoc by jamming network bandwidth with useless traffic. While that’s certainly one kind of DDoS attack, others work by devouring server resources. That means it’s possible for a successful DDoS raid to be made no matter how much bandwidth you have because it attacks your servers’ resources. To really protect a network against attacks, both your Internet connection and your servers need defenses.

Usually, DDoS attacks are aimed at your network’s TCP/IP infrastructure. These assaults come in three varieties: those that exploit weaknesses in a given TCP/IP stack implementation; those that target TCP/IP weaknesses; and the tried and true brute force attack.

More >