Practical Technology

for practical people.

July 14, 2009
by sjvn01
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Red-ink Sun Set

You can’t make up results as bad as this. Sun Microsystems, in its last days as an independent company has announced absolutely horrible preliminary numbers for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2009, which ended June 30, 2009.

According to the company, Sun expects revenues for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 in the range of $2.580 to $2.680 billion, as compared with $3.780 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008. That’s a more than billion year-over-year dollar drop.

Sun went on to state that it anticipates a GAAP (General Accepted Accounting Principles) net loss per share for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009 of from twenty-four to thirty-four cents per share. If you want to ignore GAAP, Sun says its net loss won’t be that bad: share holders will only lose six to sixteen cents per share.

Want to know more? Tough. “Sun will not host a conference call in conjunction with fourth quarter results. Results are expected to be posted on http://sun.com/investors upon the filing of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for fiscal 2009 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is due no later than August 31, 2009.”

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July 12, 2009
by sjvn01
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Is Oracle getting ready to kill OpenSolaris?

People outside of IT seldom think of Oracle as a Linux company, but it is. Not only does Oracle encourage its customers to use its own house-brand clone of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux), Oracle Unbreakable Linux, Oracle has long used Linux internally both on its servers and on some of its desktops. So, what does a Linux company like Oracle wants to do with its newly purchased Sun’s open-source operating system, OpenSolaris? The answer appears to be: “Nothing.”

Sun, Oracle and third-party sources are telling me that OpenSolaris developers are afraid that they’ll be either moved over to working on Linux or let go once the Sun/Oracle merger is completed. Other Sun open-source managers have expressed concern that their jobs may disappear once Oracle has acquired Sun.

This can’t come as much of a surprise. Edward Screven, Oracle’s Chief Corporate Architect, said last year, “”Oracle definitely runs on Linux. We have very few servers in our infrastructure that are not Linux; that support, you know, internal IT systems, very few. And even the ones that continue to exist are on a plan to be phased out. So we definitely run our business on Linux. In fact, I mean, our entire IT infrastructure is Linux, our entire development infrastructure as well. So, you know, our development platform is Oracle Enterprise Linux. Our test platform is Oracle Enterprise Linux.”

He’s not just talking a good open-source game. Oracle has had thousands of Linux developers at work since the 1990s, and Wim Coekaerts, Oracle’s VP of Linux Engineering, is a major Linux developer. Indeed, Oracle is one of the top companies contributing to the Linux kernel.

The hand-writing is on the wall. OpenSolaris is on its way out.

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July 10, 2009
by sjvn01
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Windows of mass destruction

For most of this week, prominent Web sites in both South Korea and the United States have been being bombarded by DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. At times, these assaults have knocked out multiple major sites. North Korea has been taking the blame for these attacks, but no one has any proof yet. What we do know is that the weapon that’s doing this damage is compromised Windows PCs.

Tens of thousands of Windows PCs have been taken over by an unknown botnet master. He or she is using an updated version of the ancient MyDoom Windows worm to make the attacks.

Let me put this in context. MyDoom dates from January 2004. It’s pre-historic by malware standards.

MyDoom, unlike most malware, such as Conficker was never meant to steal your credit-card numbers and the like. No, MyDoom, from its start as a DDoS attack dog aimed at SCO, was designed to wreck Web sites and, after it had done its work, blast your hard drive into randomized 1s and 0s.

Even today’s versions are primitive, brutally simple in its attacks, and, of course, powered by Windows. Without Windows, and its endless security holes, MyDoom couldn’t even exist, never mind thrive.

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July 9, 2009
by sjvn01
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Of Monopolies and Mono

Mono, the open-source development environment based on Microsoft’s .NET, has really gotten people ticked off lately. The long and short of the argument is that Mono is a Trojan-horse that will introduce Microsoft poisoned patents into Linux. After, Richard M. Stallman, free-software’s dad wrote, “Debian’s decision to include Mono in its principal way of installing GNOME, for the sake of Tomboy which is an application written in C#, leads the community in a risky direction. It is dangerous to depend on C#, so we need to discourage its use,” the fight was on.

Or, it should be said, the fight had been renewed. Stallman and many others, had often objected over the years to Linux, or other free software users embracing Mono’s implementation of C# or application written in Mono.

Stallman believes that “The danger is that Microsoft is probably planning to force all free C# implementations underground some day using software patents. This is a serious danger, and only fools would ignore it until the day it actually happens. We need to take precautions now to protect ourselves from this future danger.” Of course, no one is suggesting that any part of Linux, or any other operating system, be written in Mono. The problem is that several popular open-source programs like Tomboy, a well-regarded note-taking program; Moonlight/Moonshine, which enables users to listen and view Windows Media-bound music and videos on Linux; and Banshee, a Linux music player, are based on Mono.

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July 9, 2009
by sjvn01
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Dell is sticking with Ubuntu

I really don’t know how this rumor got started, but there are people talking about Dell no longer shipping Ubuntu-powered PCs. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The rumor might have started because Dell’s U.S. Ubuntu sales page currently only shows Ubuntu-powered laptops and netbooks without a desktop PC in sight. That’s because, according to Anne Camden, a Dell spokesperson, “We are currently transitioning desktop models, moving from the previous generation desktop (Inspiron 530) to a current generation Inspiron desktop. The Ubuntu Linux desktop offering should be back on the Website soon.”

Other sources at Dell tell me that Dell Ubuntu-powered netbooks continue to sale well. Dell will not be leaving desktop Linux.

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July 9, 2009
by sjvn01
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VirtualBox 3.0: An easy way to mix and match operating systems

Whether you prefer Linux, Windows, or Mac OS X, you can probably get almost everything you need done with your chosen OS. However, sometimes a task demands an OS that you are not currently using. That’s where virtualization programs like Sun Microsystem’s VirtualBox 3.0 come in.

What is it? VirtualBox is an open-source virtualization program which lets you run guest operating systems with your native desktop operating system. For instance, if you need Windows to run Quicken, but prefer Linux for all your other work, VirtualBox enables you to bring up Windows and Quicken without leaving your Linux desktop.

What you get is an adjustable window containing the guest operating system floating on the host system. So, for example, you could have a Windows XP guest instance entirely hiding its Linux host system.

There are currently two editions: a full package that is free for personal use (enterprises should contact Sun directly); and the Open Source Edition (OSE), which lacks a few features such as USB support and an easy installer, but comes with complete source code. Both are free.

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