Practical Technology

for practical people.

May 15, 2008
by sjvn01
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Open-Source Security Idiots

Sometimes, people do such stupid things that words almost fail me. That’s the case with a Debian ‘improvement’ to OpenSSL that rendered this network security program next to useless in Debian, Ubuntu and other related Linux distributions.

OpenSSL is used to enable SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) in Linux, Unix, Windows and many other operating systems. It also includes a general purpose cryptography library. OpenSSL is used not only in operating systems, but in numerous vital applications such as security for Apache Web servers, OpenVPN for virtual private networks, and in security appliances from companies like Check Point and Cisco.

Get the picture? OpenSSL isn’t just important, it’s vital, in network security. It’s quite possible that you’re running OpenSSL even if you don’t have a single Linux server within a mile of your company. It’s that widely used.

Now, OpenSSL itself is still fine. What’s anything but fine is any Linux, or Linux-powered device, that’s based on Debian Linux OpenSSL code from September 17th, 2006 until May 13, 2008.

What happened? This is where the idiot part comes in. Some so-called Debian developer decided to ‘fix’ OpenSSL because it was causing the Valgrind code analysis tool and IBM’s Rational Purify runtime debugging tool to produce warnings about uninitialized data in any code that was linked to OpenSSL. This ‘problem’ and its fix have been known for years. That didn’t stop our moronic developer from fixing it on his own by removing the code that enabled OpenSSL to generate truly random numbers..

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May 15, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Adobe releases Adobe Flash Player 10 beta for Linux

Adobe Systems is reaching out for Linux desktop users with its announcement today that the first beta of Adobe Flash Player 10, a.k.a. Astro, is now available for Linux, as well as Windows and Mac OS X.

In a statement, David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe, said that “Adobe had been working closely with the community; we are delivering groundbreaking creative features that will be transformative for interactive designers and developers, and revolutionary for end users.”

Unfortunately, not all those new features are available in the Linux version. The new release gives Windows and Mac OS designers the ability to create custom filters and effects that can be used with Flash’s native effects. To create these custom filters and effects, users need Adobe Pixel Bender toolkit, and this program, which is now a release candidate, is not available for Linux developers.

Adobe promises that some of the toolkit’s functionality will be incorporated into Adobe AIR, which does run on Linux in alpha release.

Flash Player 10 comes on the heels of Adobe’s Open Screen Project, whose goal is “to enable a consistent runtime environment” by relaxing some restrictions on the Flash format and releasing some Flash specifications. According to Adobe, some of Pixel Bender’s functionality will also be included in Open Screen. That said, Open Screen, isn’t regarded as being all that useful by open-source Flash developers.

The new beta provides for variable bit-rate video streaming. While this functionality isn’t usable today, it’s designed to automatically adjust the video quality between the next version of the Adobe Flash Media Server and Player depending on the available bandwidth.

Flash Player 10 also includes native support for 3-D effects to position, rotate, and animate 2-D objects while retaining interactivity. This functionality is already available for developers thanks to the PaperVision3D open source library for Flash Player 9.

Microsoft is attempting to compete with Flash with its Silverlight platform for .Net-based media files. Adobe’s beta release comes days after Miguel de Icaza, lead developer of Mono, the .Net Linux implementation, announced that the first code was available for Moonlight, a Mono-based implementation of Silverlight. While not even feature-complete, it’s the first published code that supports the Silverlight 1.0 profile for Linux.

Microsoft, as Roy Schestowitz pointed out on his Boycott Novell site, has not opened up Silverlight at all nor offered support for it on Linux. Thus, neither Flash nor Moonlight/Silverlight is really all that Linux-friendly. Both, especially for Linux creative content developers, continue to be difficult to work with. That said, for Linux users who just want to watch Flash movies, Adobe’s new beta deserves some attention.

Linux users do have another option for Flash viewing. Gnash released Gnash 0.8.2 of its GPLv3 SWF (Shockwave Flash) movie player and Firefox browser plugin in late March. Besides the browser plugin, Gnash also offers standalone players for both KDE and GNOME.

The prerelease version of Adobe Flash Player 10 beta is now available as a free download from Adobe Labs in RPM and DEB binaries. Users must uninstall Adobe Flash Player 9 for Linux before installing the beta.

A version of this story first appeared on NewsForge. >

May 15, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Five Reasons — Wait, Six! — to Start Considering WiMax Today

t’s a Wi-Fi world, but Wi-Fi has its own set of problems. Now, mobile WiMax may provide corporations with another, better way of networking the mobile workforce.

Today, everyone in the user community swears by IEEE 802.11–based wireless networks. But IT people all swear at it. The high-speed, 100Mbps-plus, 802.11n standard still hasn’t been finalized; covering space adequately with PoE (power over Ethernet) 802.11g access points (APs) continues to be difficult; and it’s all too easy to overrun a single AP with too many clients.

So, while Wi-Fi is far too useful to consider getting rid of, it also continues to be an IT deployment and management headache. This is why mobile WiMax, IEEE 802.16e, is beginning to catch the attention of CIOs and CTOs.

Here are several good reasons to consider WiMax for your future wireless network needs.

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May 14, 2008
by sjvn01
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Why Mac OS isn’t the best OS Around

When I recently explained one of the many reasons why I prefer desktop Linux to Windows, even over my favorite desktop Windows, XP SP3, I got a lot of people telling me I was full of hooey because I barely even mentioned Mac OS X.

Good enough, here’s my take on Apple’s Mac OS X.

First, I really like Mac OS X. I’ve liked it, in fact, since before there was a Mac OS X. I loved it since its first incarnation, as NeXTStep back in 1993. One of my computing regrets is that in 1995 I swapped my Color Turbo NeXTStation (Sob!) for an Adtran T1 Network Facility Interface. What can I say? I really needed a 1.544Mbps Internet connection when that kind of speed was almost unheard of for a home office.

These days I run Tiger, Mac OS X 10.4 on my PowerPC Mac Mini and Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5 on my Intel Core Duo iMac. Oh, and for the sake of completeness, I should also mention my still running Mac IIsi from 1992, which uses System 7.6.1. Finally, when I can afford it, I really want a MacBook Air.

So, with all that, why isn’t Mac OS X my favorite operating system? Because, even though its family tree goes back to open-source BSD Unix and the Mach kernel, Mac OS X is a proprietary black box. I have some very good clues, because I’ve worked with the BSDs and Darwin, Max OS X’s most immediate open-source ancestor, as to how it works, but I don’t know that for sure and Apple is making sure that I never will know.

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May 13, 2008
by sjvn01
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HP buys EDS: You fools! You fools!

Does any major technology company have a worse record when it comes to buying other companies than HP? I mean come on. Do you recall how well the Compaq buy out went? Come to think of it, where is fired CEO, the genius behind that deal, Carly Fiorina working now anyway?

Sure Compaq may have worked out in the long run, but people who argue this seem to skip answering the questions: “Did HP really get anything from buying Compaq?” and “Couldn’t HP have developed its hybrid PC sales model without Compaq?” Seems to me, HP just wasted 25-billion big ones on Compaq.

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May 13, 2008
by sjvn01
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Linspire tightens CNR ties with Mint, Ubuntu

Linspire, the San Diego, Calif.-based Linux distributor, is continuing to build up its CNR (Click-N-Run) software installation system with partnerships with Ubuntu parent Canonical and the Ubuntu-based Linux Mint distribution. Linspire recently announced that its beta CNR service now supports the Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron release and Linux Mint versions 4.0 and 5.

The CNR client enables users to install, uninstall, and update desktop Linux programs that are available on the CNR site. CNR’s aim is to make it as easy for novice Linux users to download and install or update desktop software as it is for Windows users. In addition to open source software, CNR also offers easy access to proprietary Linux software such as Parallels Workstation virtualization software and Transgaming’s Cedega, which enables people to play many Windows games on Linux. Some of these programs cost extra, but you can pay for them via CRN.

According to CEO Larry Kettler, Linspire plans on “releasing CNR clients for Debian, Fedora, and openSUSE in the near future.” In the meantime, Linspire will work on finalizing CNR’s software, and plans to improve its Ubuntu support, in part because Linspire’s own Linux distributions, Linspire 6.0 and Freespire 2.0, have been based on Ubuntu since April 2007.

“Mint,” Kettler says, “was a natural fit” for CNR since it’s also Ubuntu-based. What’s in it for Mint, according to Clement Lefebvre, Mint’s lead developer, is that “When a commercial application is bought on CNR.com, a percentage of the sale is contributed back from Linspire to Linux Mint.”

Lefebvre says, “Linspire could have added support for Linux Mint without even telling us about it, and even this would have been good news. It’s yet another choice available to our users and another step into making Linux easier to use. Not only did they do this but they came to us first, they made the effort to understand our specificities, they proposed to share the income generated on their own portal, and they’re now even helping us adding support for CNR into our own client.”

Linspire is doing this, Lefebvre explains, by “maintaining both [the] CNR.com and the CNR client for Linux Mint 4.0 and Linux Mint 5, and we’re making the client available in our repositories. Linspire is also helping us understand the CNR protocol and they’re working on documenting their own API. We’re interested in this because we would like to add support for CNR.com directly into the mintInstall client, which already supports .mint, .deb, and APT.”

Gerry Carr, marketing manager for Canonical, explains Canonical’s partnership with Linspire as being “the same relationship with Linspire that we have always had. They continue to support Ubuntu through CNR and continue to base Freespire on Ubuntu. CNR is a valuable part of the Ubuntu ecosystem and lots of people get software for Ubuntu through that service.”

Unlike Mint, however, Ubuntu is not working directly with Linspire on CNR. “The support is not joint in the sense of something we have worked on together, nor do we have any special privileges over any other distro they support through CNR,” Carr says.

For Linspire, all this means that the company is continuing to transition from being a Linux distributor to being a Linux software support company. After a difficult shift in executive leadership last year, Kettler says the company is doing better, and that CNR, with its growing multi-Linux distribution support, is largely responsible for this improvement.