Practical Technology

for practical people.

November 9, 2008
by sjvn01
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Hotmail does work–badly–with Linux

Linux-Watch has reported that at least one Linux user was unable to use the newly redesigned Windows Live Hotmail. Other Linux desktop users have also reported problems with the new Hotmail.

However, a closer look reveals that the problem isn’t with Linux and Hotmail’s interoperability, but with how Hotmail handles browsers with “UserAgent” settings that it doesn’t recognize. The User-Agent string is sent by your browser to the Web server hosting the site you’re visiting. This character string, at the least, identifies your Web browser to the server. It usually also contains optional details, which are called tokens. These typically include your operating system, language, and hardware. For example, my UserString at my main desktop is:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008091700 SUSE/3.0.3-1.1 Firefox/3.0.3

That tells the Web server that I’m using a Mozilla 5.0 compatible Web browser, on a PC with X11 windowing running on a 64-bit SUSE Linux system using the Gecko Web rendering engine and the Firefox 3.03 Web browser.

You can see what your browser is reporting to servers by visiting the, What is my User Agent Web site. Notice I didn’t say ‘what your browser actually is,’ I said. ‘what it’s reporting itself to be to servers.’ It’s a big difference and that’s where the fix for the Hotmail problem comes from.

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November 7, 2008
by sjvn01
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Why Microsoft is running scared of Linux

icrosoft is frightened. Even Ballmer is telling users that they can skip Vista, which tells you everything you need to know about Vista’s failure. In the past, Microsoft wouldn’t have sweated this kind of flop. “What can users do?” they’d say. “Move to Linux or Macs? Ha!” That was then. This is now.

Today, major PC vendors are selling netbooks like hotcakes on a cold Vermont morning and three out of ten of those are running Linux. As my comrade in arms, Preston Gralla observes, “Microsoft isn’t just worried about ceding 30 percent of the netbook market to Linux. It’s also worried that if people get used to Linux on netbooks, they’ll consider buying Linux on desktop PCs. Here’s what Dickie Chang, an analyst at research firm IDC in Taipei, told Bloomberg about that: ‘It’s a real threat to Microsoft. It gives users a chance to see and try something new, showing them there is an alternative.'”

Exactly, and that’s why Microsoft is rushing out Windows 7, which is a stripped down Vista SP2, as fast as they can and jerking out features so it will run on netbooks with minimal hardware. Gralla thinks Windows 7 will kill Linux on the netbook, I don’t see that.

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November 6, 2008
by sjvn01
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What Outsourcers Can Learn from Open-Source Communities

Out-sourcing development and open-source development may at first appear to be about as far apart as baseball and football. Both use a ball in a game, but that’s about it. Yet a closer look from open-source software developers and industry analysts reveals that enterprises using outsourcing for their programming needs could stand to learn some management and process techniques from the open-source community.

For example, one important lesson that outsourcers can pick up from open-source development communities is “the open-source community’s emphasis on asynchronous methods of communication—e-mail, bug tracker, forum, VCS (version control systems) update—over synchronous ones—phone, chat, meeting,” points out John Berkus, a PostgreSQL core team member and part of Sun’s open-source database team. According to Berkus, the advantages of asynchronous development include:

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November 6, 2008
by sjvn01
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Wi-Fi Linux network bug found, fixed

These days, most of us can use our Wi-Fi cards on Linux using native drivers. Some of us, though, are still stuck with using Windows drivers on Linux. This kludge is usually done by using the Windows driver with NDISwrapper. Unfortunately, it’s recently been discovered that there’s a crack in the kludge.

Specifically, Anders Kaseorg, a Linux developer, discovered that NDISwrapper did not correctly handle long ESSIDs (Extended Service Set ID), the optional ID name that’s sent from some Wi-Fi access points. According to Kaseorg, “If ndiswrapper is in use, a physically near-by attacker could generate specially crafted wireless network traffic and crash the system, leading to a denial of service.”

Actually, it’s bigger than just a problem that could crash a system. Secunia, a security company, stated that “Successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code.” In other words, you could use the bug to crack PCs and take control of them.

Fortunately, the bug, which was discovered in early October, already has a fix. Ubuntu has already issued a patch, and the other major Linux distributors are in the process of rolling out fixes for the problem.

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November 6, 2008
by sjvn01
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Zimbra Collaboration Server Open Source Edition is a promising low-end package

If you’re looking to run a serious open source collaboration server, Yahoo’s Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) should be on your short list. This Web 2.0 email and groupware server offers AJAX Web-based administrator and user interfaces, a variety of useful groupware features, and email import functionality.

ZCS comes in five versions. The Open Source Edition, which is the one I tried, doesn’t have all the features of the others, but it’s purely open source.

Zimbra claims all the editions run on Mac OS X and a variety of Linux platforms, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Mandriva, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES), rPath (a software appliance ISO image), and VMware (a certified virtual appliance). I installed ZCS 5.0.20 on both openSUSE 11 and SLES 10 SP2.

Installation was a breeze, and that’s something I rarely say about serious server applications. Zimbra uses a single staged installation to install all its multiple parts. Like many Unix and Linux applications, Zimbra actually incorporates multiple applications. It uses Apache Tomcat for the Web application server, Postfix for the mail transfer agent (MTA), Clam AntiVirus for virus scanning, SpamAssassin and DSPAM for spam filtering, OpenLDAP for user authentication, and MySQL for user preferences and the message data store. You could install all those by hand, but who would want to?

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November 5, 2008
by sjvn01
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Big vote: FCC approves white-space Internet broadband

Obama won the election, but for technology, in the short run at least, the even bigger voting news was that the FCC, by a vote of five to zero, had unanimously approved the conditional unlicensed use of white-space television spectrum.

White space, the 700-MHz spectrum that’s being freed up as TV channels switch from fat analog signals to thinner digital transmissions, has the potential to be used for many important uses. As Larry Page, co-founder of Google, wrote, “We will soon have “Wi-Fi on steroids” since these spectrum signals have much longer range than today’s Wi-Fi technology and broadband access can be spread using fewer base stations resulting in better coverage at lower cost.”

This is more though than just Wi-Fi on steroids. This is the opening of a new era of broadband. Today, most of us at home use either cable, DSL or, God help us, modems to connect with the Internet. Cable can be fast, but its speed is cut by the number of subscribers on any given line. DSL delivers OK performance, and as for modems, the less said the better.

Even as its best, cable at about 20Mbps, though today’s Internet demands even more bandwidth. It’s not just file-sharing with BitTorrent and the like that’s grabbing bandwidth. We’re moving to IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) with devices like the Apple TV, Netflix Player, and TiVo. Even the fastest Internet connections are stressed by 720p HDTV for these devices, and with 1080p HDTV just around the corner, our last mile bandwidth infrastructure simply isn’t up to the challenge.

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