Practical Technology

for practical people.

May 5, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

The Bounceback Backscatter Blues

At first I thought it was just me. I’d open up my e-mail inbox in the morning to find over a hundred messages telling me that people at OhMyGoshAndGoodness.com or NowWhatWasThatAllAbout.com didn’t need my spam. Spam? Me? I don’t think so!

So, I checked my systems to see if somehow or the other one of my systems had gotten a case of spam-spewing malware. Yes, I practice safe computing, but there’s always some new trick out there and maybe this time someone had gotten one by me.

Nope. It wasn’t that.

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May 5, 2008
by sjvn01
10 Comments

OpenSolaris Arrives just to Die

OpenSolaris, Sun’s open-source take on its Solaris operating system, has finally arrived. Some people, like Jason Perlow at ZDNet think that this is great news and that Sun’s latest operating system will give Linux a real challenge.

Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. I’m inclined to doubt it simply because OpenSolaris has failed to develop a strong developer community. For more on that see Ted Ts’o, noted Linux developer and CTO of the Linux Foundation, blog posting, What Sun was trying to do with Open Solaris. T’so wasn’t playing OS religious wars, he was pointing out that while “OpenSolaris has been released under an Open Source license,” it doesn’t have “an Open Source development community.”

That’s a real problem. OpenSolaris’ biggest trouble is that while it’s taken three years for OpenSolaris to reach a point where general techie sorts will get it a try, the Linux distributors, especially Red Hat, Novell/SUSE and Ubuntu, has been moving in strength both to the public and to enterprise customers.

Still, all that said, I think OpenSolaris could survive, and possibly even thrive, if it wasn’t for one sad, simple fact. Sun may not have the IP (intellectual property) rights to open-source Solaris in the first place.
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May 4, 2008
by sjvn01
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Microsoft’s Yahoo Pratfall

In the business textbooks of 2025, Microsoft’s slow collapse will be attributed to many things. The failure of Windows Vista to hold the desktop market; Microsoft’s inability to successfully move from a PC product based company to an Internet service based enterprise; and Ballmer’s inability to pull off the Yahoo buyout.

Now, buying Yahoo wasn’t going to guarantee Microsoft transition from a 20th century product-oriented company to a 21st century SAAS (Software as a Service) business, but it was a better shot than the Microsoft continuing to push its confusing mish-mash of Windows Live programs.

As it is, Microsoft’s brand is losing value; Google is beating the pants off the company on the Internet; and Linux and Apple are making gains on the desktop. Adding insult to injury, open-source programs like Firefox are gaining marketshare at the expense of Microsoft’s own products.

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May 3, 2008
by sjvn01
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Windows XP SP3: The Perfect Reason to Avoid Upgrading to Windows Vista

Now that Windows XP SP3 is arriving, is there really any good reason for a business to “upgrade” to Windows Vista? Ah … I can’t think of one.

I’ve been running XP SP3 and Vista SP1 since they were in late beta. At the moment, neither XP SP3 nor Windows Vista SP1 are available to the general public due to a problem with a Microsoft retail program. Once the update system is set to not upgrade systems with that software, Microsoft promises to turn the spigot back on for these service packs.

While I haven’t done any benchmarking with either one, I have lived and worked with both service packs. The difference between the two operating systems plus service packs is like that between day and night. Windows XP SP3 is the best Windows PC operating system I’ve ever used. In contrast: Windows Vista SP1 will finally run on one of my computers without any ongoing problems. That’s the best I can say for it.

Enough with generalities. Here’s what I’ve found in working with the pair over the last few months.

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May 2, 2008
by sjvn01
2 Comments

Computer makers push device builders for Linux-compatible hardware

For years, device and peripheral builders could get away with ignoring the Linux desktop market. It was too small to matter, they would say. Things have changed. At the Linux Foundation meeting in Austin, Texas, last month, major PC vendors ASUS, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Lenovo said they would be telling their chipset, component, and peripheral OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) that they were going to demand Linux-compatible hardware from them.

It’s one thing when Linux users ask for support; it’s an entirely different thing when multi-billion-dollar companies demand it. This is an offer that the OEMs can’t refuse.

To be precise, the companies announced during the meeting that they would start including wording in their hardware procurement processes to “strongly encourage” the delivery of open source drivers. Off the record, several of the PC makers said that they would be going further still. In their next round of OEM contracts, they intend to insert language that will require OEMs to deliver equipment either with Linux drivers or with open APIs (application programming interfaces) so it will be easy to build Linux drivers.

Some companies, such as VIA Technologies, a board and chip vendor, didn’t need the encouragement of the big PC vendors. VIA announced at the meeting that it would be open-sourcing drivers for all its equipment. During the “We’re Shipping Linux on PCs — Now What?” panel, Timothy Chen, special assistant to the president of VIA, said, “VIA hadn’t been doing much [in opening up] … it’s been hard for the company to embrace open source, but at the end of the month you’ll see us opening up.”

VIA has kept its promise. On April 30, VIA opened its VIA Linux Portal Web site to the public. As its first offering, VIA has released binary graphics drivers for the VIA CN896 digital media IGP chipset for the Ubuntu 8.04 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP 1 Linux distributions. According to the company, it will release these drivers’ documentation and source code over the coming weeks, followed by official forums and bug tracking. VIA intends to stick to a regular release schedule so that its drivers will stay in sync with major kernel Linux distribution releases.

Sources close to the major Wi-Fi silicon makers indicate that they too will be providing at least binary Linux drivers. Executives at both Atheros Communications and Broadcom Corp. have said privately that they plan on changing their ways about supporting Linux. This change is being driven both by the major PC vendors’ support for Linux and the fact that Intel’s Wi-Fi chip support for Linux is beginning to nibble away at their Wi-Fi business.

It is also noteworthy that Luis R. Rodriguez, a leading developer on the ath5K reverse-engineered, open source Atheros driver project, announced on April 15 that Atheros has hired him “as a full time employee, as a software engineer, to help them with their goals and mission to get every device of Atheros supported upstream in the Linux kernel.”

If these trends continue, we may see a day when Linux desktop users can simply assume that any device they buy will support Linux. That’s an offer no Linux desktop fan could refuse.

This story first appeared in NewsForge. >

May 2, 2008
by sjvn01
0 comments

Would you sell your Password for Chocolate?

I would at least hold out for really good chocolate but according to a study conducted in advance of the Infosecurity Europe conference in London, 70% of people surveyed at the Liverpool Street station on the London tube were happy to give up their login and password for a candy bar.

Want to know what’s worse? 34% gave out their ID and password to the researchers without any chocolate. I’d at least have gotten a Milky-Way bar out of the deal.

The reports of the study I’ve read didn’t say which logins and passwords people turn over, but since the study also discovered — surprise! — that people tended to use obvious passwords or the same password on multiple systems, it really doesn’t matter. Clearly, user ids and passwords are pretty darn useless as a real world defense against would-be crackers.

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