Practical Technology

for practical people.

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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November 3, 2008
by sjvn01
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Why I voted for Obama

I have strong political opinions, but I don’t talk about them much. I don’t pretend to know much about politics. Technology yes; business, yes; politics no.

I do know, however, that the country can’t afford another four years of government that resembles in the slightest what we’ve been subjected to for the last eight years.

Mea culpa. I voted for Bush. Twice. My excuse is that I really disliked the Democratic alternatives.

But now, after years of good men and women dying for no good reason in Iraq; after an economy that’s had been run into the ground by a pro-business administration that seems to have no clue about how to actually run businesses; and a government that runs over and around Constitutional liberties whenever it suits it, I’ve had enough.

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November 3, 2008
by sjvn01
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3 out of 10 Asus PCs run desktop Linux

I don’t get it. Why in the world are people reporting that seven out of ten Asus PCs is news. Hello. Wake up call. Nine in ten PCs, counting Macs as PCs, are already running Windows. The news, the real news, is that three out of ten Asus PCs are being sold with Linux.

To be exact, according to Asustek, “The company shipped 2.5 million notebooks in the first half of this year, 1.7 million units in the third quarter and is expecting to ship 1.9 million units in the fourth quarter, bringing the company’s annual notebook shipments in 2008 to at least six million units.” Breaking that down by operating system, “The ratio of Eee PCs preloaded Windows XP and Linux stands at 7:3.”

So, by year’s end, there will be 2.4-million more desktop Linux uses. Maybe my colleague Preston Gralla is right. Perhaps Microsoft is getting worried about Linux on the desktop and that’s one reason why they’re cutting the fat out of Vista Second Edition, aka Windows 7, to make it more competitive with Linux. Certainly, Microsoft is already doing its best to flim-flam people with overly-rosy early reviews of Windows 7.

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