Practical Technology

for practical people.

October 7, 2009
by sjvn01
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London Stock Exchange dumps Windows for Linux

When it comes to business computer systems, nothing, but nothing, is more mission-critical than the massive trading software systems that underlie stock markets. A failure of an hour here can mean billions of dollars of lost trades. The LSE (London Stock Exchange) learned that the hard way when their .NET/Windows Server 2003 trading platform died like a dog early last September. The new LSE management is going to go make that mistake again. This October, the LSE purchased MillenniumIT and it will be switching its stock exchange programs to the company’s Linux-based Millennium Exchange software.

I saw this move coming. While the LSE never officially announced that its Windows and .NET stock trade software TradElect was the root of its September failure and its perpetually slow performance, it was an open secret in the City, London’s equivalent to America’s Wall Street, that that was the case. Indeed, it was this technology flop that lead to the LSE CEO Clara Furse leaving the Exchange in July. The new CEO, Xavier Rolet, immediately decided to get rid of TradElect and started shopping for other platforms.

Friends of mine in the City tell me that the LSE immediately started considering a Linux-based solution. It doesn’t take a genius to see why. The world’s fastest stock exchanges, like New York’s International Security Exchange, run on Linux. In a world with high-frequency trading where a millisecond really can mean the difference between profit and loss, stock exchanges can afford to be slow, never mind actually going off-line.

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October 6, 2009
by sjvn01
3 Comments

Karmic Koala: The best Ubuntu Linux ever?

I’ve looked at hundreds of Linux distributions over the years. Some of them have been awful. Many have been OK. And, a few have been great. Based on my early look at Karmic Koala, Ubuntu 9.10, I think we’ve got a very strong Linux desktop distribution coming down the way.

Before jumping into my early review, let me say that while I like Ubuntu, I’m not an Ubuntu fanboy. I also like Fedora, openSUSE, Mint, and MEPIS to name a few Linux distributions that I use on a regular basis.

What caught my eye with this version of Ubuntu is that, especially for a beta, it’s a remarkably attractive and smooth-running Linux distribution. I first installed it as a virtual machine with Sun’s VirtualBox on a Gateway DX4710-09. This computer uses an Intel Dual Core 2.5GHz E5200 processor. I have the 64-bit version of the new Ubuntu 2GBs of RAM and a 10GB virtual drive. In addition, I installed the Koala on a Dell Inspiron 530S. This low-end PC is powered by a 2.2-GHz Intel Pentium E2200 dual-core processor with an 800-MHz front-side bus. The test machine had 4GB of RAM, a 500GB SATA (Serial ATA) drive, and an Integrated Intel 3100 GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) chip set.

On both systems, I was very impressed by installation program. Not only did it look great, it automatically detected and set-up all the hardware. Linux distributions, in general, have gotten much better with this kind of thing, but Ubuntu 9.10 not only worked great at taking a PC from a lifeless pile of chips to a living and useful PC, it looked great doing so.

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October 5, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Mix and match Web browsers are a bad idea

We all know that Internet Explorer, especially the older versions like IE 6, is slow and insecure. You may also have heard that Google released a plug-in, Google Chrome Frame, that essentially lobotomizes IE and replaces its functionality with its much faster Chrome Web browser.

It’s a cute trick, and it really does show off just how much faster IE with Chrome Frame is than plain-Jane IE. I’ve done it myself on my Windows XP and 7 boxes and the results are stunning. I expect it to be faster, but what I got was ‘knock your socks off’ faster. I saw complicated pages that were fat with JavaScript and took up to 10-seconds to load with IE, explode onto the screen in less than a second.

Microsoft has thrown a fit about this. Amy Bazdukas, Microsoft’s general manager for IE, said, “It’s not necessarily that plug-ins aren’t or can’t be secure, but that running a browser within a browser doubles the potential attack surface in a way that we don’t see is particularly helpful.”

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October 1, 2009
by sjvn01
1 Comment

Red Hat comes out swinging against software patents

What do Microsoft, Red Hat, and Canonical all have in common? They all dislike software patents. Don’t get me wrong. Many companies that are anti-patent also hold and use patents against their enemies. Microsoft is one of those. But, if you get an in-house corporate IP (intellectual property) lawyer from any company in a bar, he or she will tell you that software patents are awful. So, I’m pleased to report that Red Hat, has filed an amicus curiae brief with SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) asking the Court to adopt the Bilski case ruling and explictly extend it so that software can’t be patented. .

The Reader Digest’s condensed version of the Bilski case decision is that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that you couldn’t patent business methods. By extension this means most software couldn’t be patented either.

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October 1, 2009
by sjvn01
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No safety for SMB2 users yet

If you want to share files and printers over your network, chances are you use SMB (Server Message Block) either on Windows or Samba. Microsoft, which lost control of SMB a while back, decided a new protocol which could they own: SMB2. There’s only one little problem with it. It’s not nearly as secure as plain old SMB.

The hole in SMB2 was discovered only a few weeks ago on September 7th, but everyone knew it would be easy to exploit. Everyone was right.

While there has have been earlier attack code out in the wild, on September 28th, Harmony Security senior researcher Stephen Fewer released code that lets anyone try to run unauthorized software on a Windows Vista, Server 2008, and early pre-releases of Windows 7.

And has Microsoft rushed to the rescue? Nope. In fact, experts think that the earliest Microsoft will be able to fix the problem will be on the next Patch Tuesday, October 13th. In the meantime, Microsoft recommends that you should just turn SMB2 off.

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September 30, 2009
by sjvn01
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Waiting for Chrome

I keep expecting Google to release an alpha version of their Chrome operating system, but it hasn’t happened yet. I know they’re working on it, but that’s about all I can say. However, over in China, there’s a story of early devices running alpha Chrome and some Linux fans have made their own version of Chrome.

First, there’s a report from Shanzai, a news site that covers China’s technology business, that “devices sporting Google’s much trumpeted Chrome OS will start to appear in mid October.” Specifically, Chrome will show up in devices using the Chinese-designed Loongson CPU.

The Loongson CPU, like the better known ARM processor family, are MIPS-based CPUs. Like the ARM Cortex chip family, Loongson chips are used in mobile devices, netbooks, and — at its fastest speed — these CPUs are beginning to be experimented with in full-powered laptops and desktops. Since Google is working on Chrome with Freescale, the primary ARM vendor, and several Chinese vendors, it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if some vendors have gotten their hands on pre-alpha Chrome code.

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