June 29, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Never reboot again with Linux and Ksplice

I usually have to reboot my Linux systems about once every six months. Linux is as stable as a rock. Windows, while it’s gotten better, is another story entirely. While I no longer need to reboot Windows on a daily basis, I still must reboot my Windows PC at least twice a month-one “what the heck was that” problem and Patch Tuesday. For some users, telecommunication server/carrier grade administrators in particular even twice-a-year reboots is twice a year too often and that’s where Ksplice comes in.

Ksplice, according to its developers, “enables running systems to stay secure without the disruption of re-booting. Specifically, Ksplice creates re-bootless updates that are based on traditional source code patches. These updates are as effective as traditional updates, but they can be applied seamlessly, with no downtime.”

Guess what? It works.

I don’t have a carrier-grade server in the house, but I do have an Ubuntu 9.04 desktop and the developers have just released a version of Ksplice Uptrack for it. So, I installed this Python-based update system on my Gateway 503GR. This PC has a 3GHz Pentium IV CPU, 2GBs of RAM, an ATI Radeon 250 graphics card, and a 300GB SATA (Serial Advanced Technology Attachment) hard drive.

Before installing Ksplice, though, I zapped my hard disk and reinstalled Ubuntu 9.04, aka Jaunty Jackalope, from a CD of its first release. You won’t want to do that, but I wanted to give it as much of a workout as I could manage.

I had a bit of trouble installing it at first, although the installation routine itself is as easy as can be. My problem was that the Ksplice installation routine ran afoul of the automatic update system. I solved this by killing that system off, resetting the Debian package system.

After that, it was smooth sailing and I had replaced Ubuntu’s default update system with Ksplice. A few minutes later I’d updated the entire system with Ksplice with all the latest patches, without even a hint that I might need to reboot for a security upgrade. Nice.

By default, Ksplice shows up in your system menu-bar so you can keep an eye on what’s happening with your updates. While Ksplice itself is open-source software, and the service for individual users is free, you’ll need to pay a service fee if you’re a business using Ksplice to keep your servers up-to-date.

Since Ksplice doesn’t require any changes to the Linux kernel I strongly suspect you’ll soon be seeing its technology used with other Linux distributions. After all, as great as Linux is about letting you run for months on end without wasting time or money on a reboot, it will be even better when we can run Linux for years without rebooting.

A version of this story first appeared in ComputerWorld.

June 26, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Google will slowly let new Google Voice users in

Remember when Google first started Gmail and you had to have an invitation to get in? It’s going to be the same kind of deal with Google Voice.

Google Voice, if you haven’t heard of it yet, is a free Web-based application that lets you control all your various phone numbers — work, home, mobile, you name it–from a single, central phone number and Web page. It also includes most of the features of a PBX (Private Branch Exchange)–call forwarding, voice mail, call recording–for free.

Until recently the only way you could get Google Voice was to have been a user of its predecessor service, GrandCentral. Starting immediately, Google is finally letting more users into the service.

Don’t get too excited yet though. Sources at Google tell me that, “We are planning to start a gradual roll out of invitations to people who signed up on our Google Voice wait list. This won’t be open, general availability.”

More >

June 26, 2009
by sjvn01
3 Comments

Amazon pulls plug on NC Amazon Associates over taxes

I was bemused to find out this morning, June 26, that Amazon had put an end to my, and all North Carolina residents, Amazon Associates accounts. This program, for those who don’t know it, is simply a way you can use to sell Amazon products through your Web site.

The reason that Amazon did this is that NC has slipped a new tax in its state budget: a ‘click-through’ tax. This will apply NC sales tax to purchases of digital media and physical items that are bought after clicking through a Web site.

So, for example, you may never actually ever have a Michael Jackson Thriller CD in hand, but by providing an Amazon Associates’ sales link to the CD on your Web site to the Amazon Web page where it can actually be bought, NC intends on levying a sales tax on your ‘sale.’
Continue Reading →

June 25, 2009
by sjvn01
6 Comments

Cleaning the Spam Cesspool

Is there anyone left in the world unacquainted with the plight of the Abachas of Nigeria? The Abacha family fortune is not only down to a mere US $30 million, but it’s inaccessible, frozen in certain bank accounts that can be unlocked only with your Urgent Assistance, which usually consists of disclosing a bank account number, to your ultimate detriment.

The Abacha e-mails are just one of the many waves of Nigerian-based fraud schemes, which date back to faxes in the 1980s. And in turn, they’re just the tip of the spam sewage tsunami that, by some estimates, is much as 90%+ percent of all e-mails, and its volume is growing ever larger.

For years people have been trying, with only limited success, to sort the good mail wheat from the spam chaff in a variety of ways, such as creating lists of known spammers, or mail servers that harbor known spammers, blacklisting and lists of known spam messages, filtering. When done conservatively, such methods still let a lot of spam through. When done aggressively, they block legitimate messages as well as spam.

But these are hacksaws, when what’s needed are scalpels. And sure enough, a new technique has come along recently that promises to shunt almost all one’s unwanted messages to the virtual trash bin without also zapping any of the mail you want to read. It works by a sort of mathematical induction: you identify which messages are spam, and pattern-matching software, based on principles of probability theory first formulated by Thomas Bayes in the 18th century, finds commonalities among the bad messages, and among the remaining good ones as well. Rules are then formulated that generalize from those particulars.

Continue Reading →

June 25, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Digg, Dug, Buried: How Linux news disappears

Like it or lump it, the major reason that determines whether any given online story will get read or not is how much play it gets on news link sharing sites and social networks like Digg, reddit, and StumbleUpon. Unlike earlier news sharing sites like Slashdot, these sites have no central editorial control. Instead, the stories that get prominent play on these sites is determined entirely by readers. That sounds like democracy in its most basic form, but in practice what it really means that stories can be buried from sight by abusive users with an ax to grind.

I became aware of this because in the last few weeks I’ve had several stories that were pro-Linux and anti-Microsoft-Linux, it doesn’t get any faster and Macs, Windows 7, and Linux–first became popular on Digg, and, an hour later they were buried.

On Digg, what this means is that, unless you already know the Digg link, or specifically search for a tale with the buried story option on, the story link disappears. In short, no matter how many people thought it was a good story, other people will no longer be able to see it.

More >

June 24, 2009
by sjvn01
0 comments

Apple TV 2.4: Well worth the download

The latest version of the Apple TV firmware, Apple TV 2.4, doesn’t have any major improvements, but it does include a few nice, new features and, from what I can see, gives the Apple TV a real performance kick.

First, the features. The one that I like the most is that when you’re looking over your collection you can now view movies by genre, title, or by whether you’ve already viewed them or not. With your TV Shows or Podcasts in addition to seeing them grouped by show, you can also now view them by date or by whether you’ve watched them or not.

The Apple TV’s remote has also had a bit more functionality added to it. Now, when watching a video you can not only click right or left to fast forward or rewind, but if you click again you’ll increase the speed. In addition, although Apple doesn’t say so, it certainly seems to me that the Apple TV does a better job of displaying the video while either rewinding or fast-forwarding. If you click down, you’ll see chapter markets and can navigate through your video with these.