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Ted's Radio Weblog
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Thursday, March 31, 2005 |
Recently, I had to translate a csh shell script to bash, and I'm not fluent in either. I found the "BASH Programming - Introduction HOW-TO" to be a helpful reference to understanding how things worked in bash. It's cool to be learning new stuff!
2:43:24 PM 
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It was five years ago tomorrow that lzip version 1.0 was released. Lossy Data Compression, with compression ratios far beyond those available with conventional zip, gzip or even bzip technologies, should have taken the world by storm. Instead, they have ended up in this dusty little corner of SourceForge.net. Check out the site and learn why. Don't miss the FAQs and License sections!
11:43:02 AM
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OSNews reports "Ubuntu Linux 5.04 release candidate. The release candidate of Ubuntu Linux 5.04 is available."
Ubuntu is getting a lot of attention as an up-and-coming distribution. It is Debian-based, has a slick interface, comes with a try-before-you-commit Live CD, and it's free for the download. BitTorrent links are available at the web site above. Took very little time to download the ISO files using BitTorrent - remember to leave your client running after you get your copy to share the load with the rest of the community! - since many other people were downloading too. That's what good peer-to-peer file sharing is all about.
9:50:18 AM
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Wednesday, March 30, 2005 |
Google had a distinctive logo today, as they do for many holidays and events. No explanation on the site that I could find, but Wikipedia reveals it's Vincent's birthday.
4:47:47 PM
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Tom Yager's weekly column in InfoWorld: Application development starts out: "The IT generalist makes a comeback. I’ve been seeing the title “IT generalist” coming back into use. It’s a welcome sight. I recall the generalist from the days when minicomputers and mainframes were being traded for less costly Unix microcomputers. Back then, the generalist was the one who had a functional understanding of the entire technical operation and many of the processes that depended on it. If you had a generalist, by any title, you may have him or her to thank for easing the transition from legacy to modernity."
I think IT generalist is a lot less presumptuous than "Architect" particularly the capitalized ones. General Knowledge has often taken a back seat to Specialization, usually resulting in a loss of Perspective. Speaking with an experienced UNIX admin last night, and he wondered how we got into this situation where people are slapping together systems that are held together with baling wire and shoestrings; his thesis was that there was a lack of "system perspective." I spoke with another friend just back from the US Pycon conference; a long-time Windows developer, he was amazed to see people sitting around with Powerbooks and Linux laptops and Windows laptops and all working together -- he'd had no idea. He'd been sheltered in the Redmond Reality Distortion Field. C'mon out, folks, the air is great out here!
Mission: Interoperable. Competition breeds Innovation. Monopolies breed stagnation. Working Well with Others is Good.
4:44:42 PM
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In "Return of the Mac," Paul Graham writes: "All the best hackers I know are gradually switching to Macs."
At the LinuxWorld show in Boston last month, Apple had a small understated booth, with a couple of company reps out front, and a plain table with a Mac Mini, an XServe and an XServe RAID up and running. They were low-key and glad to answer questions. I spoke with one of them and said "The Mac is my favorite unix workstation," and he replied "I'm glad someone knows why we are here."
10:09:08 AM
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Tuesday, March 29, 2005 |
Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports "Microsoft's Grand Plan To Go Vertical. Can Microsoft transform itself from a product-focused company into a solutions-oriented one? Top brass are betting that it can."
Microsoft is wise to diversify. From consumer products like MSN and Xbox to hardware like mice and keyboards, Microsoft is spreading its bets around. They make operating systems for home users and for big servers. They sell games. They sell development tools. We'll see if the "plan to go vertical" realigns the OS, servers and desktop products divisions or just becomes yet another diversification.
12:04:54 PM
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Monday, March 28, 2005 |
From the Bash Reference Manual, available online for Free, of course:
A Unix shell is both a command interpreter and a programming language...
While executing commands is essential, most of the power (and complexity) of shells is due to their embedded programming languages. Like any high-level language, the shell provides variables, flow control constructs, quoting, and functions.
These are not your forefather's DOS batch files.
3:56:02 PM
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Sunday, March 27, 2005 |
A security update 2005-003 for Mac OS X 10.3.8 is available for download from the Apple site, or from the automated software update. Details can be read at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301061. Updated packages include: AFP Server, Bluetooth Setup Assistance, Core Foundation, Cyrus IMAP, Cyrus SASL, Folder permissions, Mailman, Safari (addresses the IDN exploits), Samba and SquirrelMail.
10:55:25 AM
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Saturday, March 26, 2005 |
Dan Bricklin's Log: A theory about extreme fear of the GPL. "I'm putting my material that is legalistic and narrowly related to Open Source and copyright that comes out of my work on my video on the Software Garden Training Video Blog. I'll try to also mention here some of the more general interest stuff I put there. I just posted an observation I made after attending a conference on best practices in standards setting... Read "A theory about extreme fear of the GPL"."
2:16:23 PM
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Friday, March 25, 2005 |
CompuServe is running a survey. You don't need to be a member:
http://go.compuserve.com/MSDevApps?LOC=us
John Koziol of Microsoft responds, "Excuse me for saying so, but that's a dumb-ass survey."
I couldn't say it better myself. Let's put VFP over the top!
5:35:45 PM
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OSNews reports "Microsoft funding of security report decried. Two researchers surprised the audience at a computer-security convention last month with their finding that a version of Microsoft Windows was more secure than a competing Linux operating system. This week, the researchers released their finished report, and it included another surprise: Microsoft was funding the project all along."
I heard about the report and I was really pleased that Microsoft may have finally started catching on with Windows Server 2003 in shipping a product that's reasonably secure out of the box. To say it is about time is a vast understatement. To claim that redeems Microsoft, or has any effect on the 500 million insecure Windows installations out there is wrong. From my limited experience with W2K3, it's a lot more difficult to work with, since lots of features are disabled by default, and turning them on is far from intuitive. It's pretty much too late for me. I've taken my business elsewhere.
5:29:57 PM
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Two interesting articles from Doc Searls' IT Garage: Doc has been banging the drum for a while on the theme of Do It Yourself Information Technology: DIY-IT. In Nonfriction, he ridicules the 'Vendor Sports' attitude of much of the information technology press: it's not Novell vs. WordPerfect, MS vs. Sun, it's 'how do I get this stupid document to print' out in the field. Andrew, you'll like this piece, as he quotes Guy Kawasaki as well as others. His second piece, Non-Profit Use of Open Source is an interesting story of how FOSS can fit in the the non-profit segment. Some good references to look into here, too. If you're not subscribed to Doc's feed, I encourage it. There are some potent ideas brewing here.
4:01:41 PM
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Thursday, March 24, 2005 |
What a bizarre idea! The Boston Area Windows Server User Group has announced a Malware UnloadFest, an all-day lecture and lab, taking place on Saturday, April 9th at the Microsoft Offices in Waltham, Massachusetts. They are chargine $30.00 admission. I wonder if there's a money-back guarantee. What's Microsoft's liability on this? I can't believe the User Group members are going to try to "clean" (their word) compromised machines. How can you tell a compromised machine is cured? You can't. Clean? Dust 'em out, fine. Then FDISK them. Boot them with Knoppix if you have to, to rescue files for which you haven't a backup (tsk, tsk), but the OS is history and none of the files can be trusted. What a dangerous idea.
3:38:30 PM
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 The FoxProWiki notes that FireFox 1.0.2 is released
Tools | Options | Software Update | Check Now
should start the download. (It doesn't appear that the Mac version is ready yet, but use FireFox | Preferences instead of Tools | Options ). If you don't already have it installed, start at http://www.mozilla.org to check out all the cool products: FireFox, Thunderbird, the Mozilla Suite, Camino and more.
Note that you will need to restart FireFox to complete the re-install. This patch addresses a GIF buffer-overflow security problem, not yet exploited in the wild, supposedly.
12:52:38 PM
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Wednesday, March 23, 2005 |
Eric Sink, lead benevolent dictator at SourceGear maintains Eric.Weblog() and regularly posts interesting materials, including the draft chapters of a source code control book he's writing. In Comments on the pricing of Team System, Eric writes:
"I observe that most MSDN Universal subscribers have an expectation which looks something like this:
As an MSDN Universal subscriber, I get everything Microsoft sells.
Given this expectation, it is easy to understand why people are upset. For these people, the world is about to change."
8:21:14 PM
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Novell/SuSE is running their BrainShare conference this week, and it looks like they have loaded up on announcments:
OSNews notes "A Bunch of Novell News. Why Novell's internal migration to Linux desktops is a landmark story. Novell preps Linux Desktop 10: Desktop search, note taking features will surpass Windows, execs say. Novell buys N.H.'s Tally Systems to benefit ZenWorks."
InfoWorld: Application development reports "Novell preps Linux Desktop 10. SALT LAKE CITY, Utah -- Linux is ready for the corporate desktop, and the forthcoming version of Novell's Linux Desktop offering will go head-to-head against Windows, Novell executives said here this week at the company's annual BrainShare gathering."
Slashdot also picks up on Novells internal migration storry, with "Brainshare Reports: NLD 10, Novell's Linux Switch. An anonymous reader submits "Computer World has an article about Novell Linux Desktop 10, which was just announced at Brainshare, that it plans to compete directly with Windows. One of the biggest things about NLD 10 is that it will have the desktop search engine Beagle as a feature." Also from Brainshare, Joe Barr writes on NewsForge about the significance of Novell's ongoing (multi-year) transition to Linux for all of its 6,000 desktops. Consultants and software sellers of all stripes won't soon run out of TCO arguments for the products they want to push, but Novell claims to have saved $900,000 last year in Microsoft license fees alone."
6:49:42 PM
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EFF to appeal ruling in Apple freedom of the press case. "The EFF has filed an appeal in the lawsuit involving Apple and a handful of rumor sites. The EFF argues that the original ruling endangers journalistic integrity, while giving Apple an easy time. By caesar@arstechnica.com (Ken "Caesar" Fisher)." From Ars Technica.
Interesting arguments. Looking forward to seeing how this case is resolved.
5:39:34 PM
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Tuesday, March 22, 2005 |
Ed Leafe posts "Just in time for PyCon DC 2005, we'd like to announce the release of Dabo 0.3.2. A summary of what's changed since the last release can be found at http://dabodev.com/announcements/changeLog-0.3.2. Source code is available for download at http://dabodev.com/download."
dabo is an application framework for developing rich-client data-centric applications, released under the OSI-apprived MIT license. It runs (and is in use at customer sites) in Linux, Windows and OS X, and probably in other platforms supporting Python. While the primary focus has been compatibility with MySQL, support for PostgreSQL and Firebird are included in this version. Check out the links above for a wiki full of development information and to download source code and demos to play with.
-- Ted Roche, dabo commercial licensee #1
10:09:24 AM
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Monday, March 21, 2005 |
Andrew MacNeill follows up on my Ted's full post(?) on Apple/Think secret. ... "Either way, stolen property that provides a story spells bad news for anyone- journalist or not."
If you have an apple and I take it, I have an apple and you don't. You have been robbed of property. If you have an idea and I learn of it, then we both have an idea. You have not been robbed of your idea. Ideas should not be property to be protected by law from others. The practical, physical implementation of an idea - an invention - can be patented for a decade or two. An expression of an idea in writing - code or literature - can be copywritten for the (obscenely long, imho) period of seventy-five years or more. But an idea that you will do something or say something sometime is not an invention. It is not a copywritable expresssion. It may be a trade secret: some sort of confidential information that you can bind your employees and vendors under contract to keep confidential. Some secrets - the formula to Coke is often cited - are closely guarded for good reason. Other secrets - like a software project code name - is handed out like candy to try to get a buzz going about vaporware.
Rumor columnists occupy a funny niche. They don't investigate as much as gather, they rarely verify. Calling them a journalist is a stretch at best. However, they do not steal. They don't break into office buildings and crack safes and steal documents stamped SECRET. They answer the phone, they get email. Someone faxes them a tidbit or two.
Some of the people who send them rumors are making them up, lying about a new thing for the prestige or to start a buzz for their competing product or to quash a competitor. Some work for the company and are doing their jobs and some are undermining their employer. Some are probably violating the contracts they had with their companies, some with their supervisor's approval and some with their oblivion.
The rumor monger hasn't signed an NDA with Apple. They know enough to publish a rumor that the next iPod will be purple (remember, folks, you heard it here first!) and enough sense not to publish a secret schematic. These people aren't competing for a Pulitzer. Most are likely low-paid flunkies at the magazines. (Just who is Buzz Hunter at Advisor, anyway? :) But they're just doing their jobs. They are not fencing stolen property, they are printing rumors.
Apple should not be able to waste court time and threaten rumormongers with bankrupcy through court procedings for publishing information they had no way of determining was or was not protected by some legal entanglement. Let Apple secure their leaky house themselves, not in the courts.
9:58:13 PM
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Alex Feldstein points to news that "Ask Jeeves (and Bloglines) sold. Ask Jeeves (which recently bought Bloglines) has been sold for $1.85 billion (an amazing sum). It has been bought by the owners of Expedia and TicketMaster... Will things improve? We'll have to wait and see."
4:06:50 PM
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Sunday, March 20, 2005 |
Welcome, spring, and a belated happy anniversary for the blog!
Spring sprung in Contoocook this morning. Temperature's above 40 for the first time this year. There's still a couple of feet of snow on the ground, but it's starting to warm up. Still waiting for the other shoe to drop - there's snow in the forecast for tonight.
Three years ago Friday I started blogging and my Spring equinox entry included a picture of our humble abode buried in white stuff:
Eighteen hundred blog postings later, ...
11:52:27 AM
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Saturday, March 19, 2005 |
Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc. blogs "A Bubble Tale to Make You Angry. The Seattle Times should get a Pulitzer for the series called "Dot-Con Job" -- a deep and scathing look at the sleaze that permeates a company called InfoSpace as it rose to prominence during the Internet bubble and then plummeted to almost nothing... I came away infuriated, and convinced that some people should go to jail."
Don't read it unless you, too, want to get miffed.
8:25:17 AM
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Friday, March 18, 2005 |
Eric Bangeman (eric@arstechnica.com) of Ars Technica reports EU not happy with Microsoft antitrust compliance. "According to the European Commission, Microsoft is not fully complying with terms of the EC's antitrust remedies... According to the EC, the royalty and license terms offered by Microsoft are unreasonable and unfairly exclude vendors of open source software"
Obviously, Microsoft still needs to learn the meaning of the word interoperability. Competing on features and support could make Microsoft such an industry leader.
UPDATE: If you enjoy dry British humour, OSNews points to a UK ZDNet column: "Microsoft's Windows Communications Protocol Licence Explained. Microsoft is guilty of breaking EU competition law, and has come up with a way to make amends. ZDNet dissects the resulting licence and find a very peculiar world indeed."
6:09:19 PM
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Wednesday, March 16, 2005 |
OSNews points to EDS: Linux is insecure, unscalable. Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Fuji Xerox, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC."
And what exactly is the purpose of this "alliance?" According to the article, to compete with IBM and HP. What a surprise. And what software do they favor? Theirs, of course. What nonsense!
All OSes likely have an appropriate place in a well planned enterprise.
7:41:21 PM
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OSNews points to the story making the rounds that "Apple May Release Two Button Mouse. According to AppleInsider Apple is working on a two button mouse to further assist people switching from Windows." Isn't it a bit early for April Fool's columns to be hitting the internet?
I've been running my iMac for a year with a Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse Blue. Just plugged it in, and the right mouse button pops open context menus, the scrollwheel scrolls and the middle click pastes in terminal windows. It Just Works.
3:40:47 PM
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Tuesday, March 15, 2005 |
OSNews points to an Interview with Josh Berkus of PostgreSQL. "The PostgreSQL database project has recently released Version 8.0, which was received with quite some fanfare, mostly due to its first-ever Windows port. Mad Penguin talked with Josh Berkus, one of the core team members, to find out how 8.0 has fared since its official release on January 17, 2005." Interesting and brief reading for those curious about the project. While MySQL has gotten the lion's share of the attention in the Free/Open Source Software market so far, PostGreSQL is a worthy and feature-packed competitor.
3:36:54 PM
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OSNews echoes ZDNet's lead paragraph: Fedora takes off as Red Hat declines. "Latest statistics for the Web server market show that Fedora, Red Hat's free Linux operating system, is growing in popularity. But the picture isn't quite so rosy for its enterprise offering."
But Read the Fine Article (RTFA) and you find out that 400,000 web sites are now running Fedora, placing it at number 5. And 20,000 less sites are running RedHat, which still leaves it in the top spot with 1.61 million deployments. That represents a 122% increase in the hobbyist/experimental distribution of Fedora, and a 1.2%, yes, One-Point-Two percent decrease in RedHat.
The survey cites only 4 million web sites in this survey, so this is not the same study as the March Netcraft study I pointed to earlier with sixty million sites surveyed. So what's the subset here? The article is unclear.
Fedora had a new major release in the last year, and it is attracting attention, while RedHat Enterprise Linux 4 has just been released, after the date of the survey. RedHat is facing stiff competition with Novell/SuSE and other commercially supported versions of Linux, but still seems to be holding its own or slipping ever so slightly, though not increasing its market share. Competition is Good.
While the analysis isn't a gross misrepresentation, if I were RedHat, with 1.6 million customers @ $349 a year (or more) each, I would see the picture as more rosy. That's likely not the case. The original Netcraft article isn't clear what "RedHat" is it talking about: my suspicion is that that number is a summary of RedHat 7, 8, 9 and two versions of Enterprise Linux. It would be interesting to see what the uptake of RHEL is, and whether it is RH 7.0 and 8.0 boxes that are being sent out to pasture.
12:38:50 PM
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Monday, March 14, 2005 |
Recently, the USB ports on my ThinkPad stopped working. My suspicion is that I probably zapped them with static electricity, as we'd had some dry and bitterly cold weather, and I'm usually running around in a couple layers of fleece this time of year.
At Best Buy, I picked up a Dynex 2-port USB 2.0 card so that I could plug in mice, keyboards, and the essential USB data drives. Imagine my surprise when I unpacked the box and found a funny little power cord, with a T-connector of male and female USB connectors on one end, and a small round power plug on the other. I guess that the PCMCIA bus doesn't supply enough power for USB peripherals, as they would not work without the cord plugged in. Much to my relief, it appears that the dead USB connectors in my laptop can still supply power, even though USB devices aren't recognized. Just a warning , though: if you need to add USB ports to your notebook, you'll need to already have USB ports on your notebook to power the new ones. Go figure.
Despite the fact that the card is listed as supporting only Windows operating systems (the blister pack also listed Max OS X 10.1 or later), the card came right up and was detected properly in Linux Fedora Core 3, too.
3:06:57 PM
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Sunday, March 13, 2005 |
Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions blogs Nigel's Blog - interesting TV /blogging cross-promotion. "NBC's Crossing Jordan has an interesting concept going on right now. It seems it was started a while ago but one of their forensic characters, Nigel,(played by Steve Valentine) is "blogging"... Yes, doesn't that sound fake? But what's neat about this is that it's all in line with a case being done on the series and the actual blog is broken up with all bits and pieces of what's going on in the case. (check out the files area for interesting links) Nigel's Blog"
Laura and I enjoy watching Crossing Jordan. The mysteries are fun, the ensemble cast has some good long story arcs, and there are dead bodies. What more could you ask?
6:47:34 PM
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Dan points to brother Steve's posting on The RSS Bubble. Steve Gillmor: Bodcasting. "Splash! Fwoop! Znorf. It's the sound of nextgen RSS plays parachuting into the Valley, Rte. 128, and everywhere there's a broadband connection. Odeo, Brightcove, ourmedia, the Times -- by this time next spring the forest will be thick with bees circling in search of unpolinated flowers. The RSS Bubble is here." Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc.
Dust off those business plans! Search and replace ASP with RSS! Crank up the burn rate. man, does this game ever end?
4:34:03 PM
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Daring Fireball pokes big holes in the argument that Think Secret is a journalist with his entry "On the Credibility of The New York Times:"
Reporters for The New York Times don't do this. They may engage in speculation about upcoming products -- including Apple's -- but not by engaging sources willing to reveal a company's trade secrets.
1:24:23 PM
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Saturday, March 12, 2005 |
"If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."
-- George Bernard Shaw
2:21:30 PM
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Dan Gillmor blogs Apple's "Trade Secrets". "Reporting on business, if this bad ruling is upheld on appeal, will be a great deal harder in the future."
Andrew MacNeill posted something similar on his blog, and I started a reply in a comment there, thought a blog entry might be better, and (scope creep!), it grew into a full-fledged essay. I'm still working on that one, and it's a bit scatter-brained, but wanted to save it to disk before it vanished into the ether... net.
12:41:52 PM
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Friday, March 11, 2005 |
Computerworld News reports "Burst, Microsoft reach tentative settlement in antitrust case. Burst.com had filed its lawsuit against Microsoft in 2002, alleging that the software vendor stole patented technology and trade secrets concerning Internet-based video-on-demand for its Windows Media Player."
This'll be a real disappointment if it comes to pass, although Microsoft likely had little choice. Burst had pretty damning evidence that not only had Microsoft infringed on Burst's intellectual property, but also alleged some pretty explosive evidence that Microsoft had systematically and intentionally destroyed email records to hide those earlier violations. This has been a crusade of the columnist known pseudonymously as Robert X. Cringely in columns here and here testify.
8:18:05 PM
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Ed Foster's Gripelog column this week asks "Why You Should Stop Before You Click. This week the Americans For Fair Electronic Commerce Transactions (AFFECT) coalition announced its "Stop Before You Click" campaign promoting its 12 Principles for Fair Commerce in Software and Other Digital Products. But what does AFFECT mean by all that? After we stop before we click, what do we do next?"
The Twelve Principles read like a great start on a new relationship between commercial software vendors (and electronic consumer products) and their customers. Here's some of the preamble:
When you buy an off-the-shelf product for yourself or your business, you expect the law to provide you with some basic rights. For example, your car will work as advertised. Or you will be allowed to legally sell the television set when you upgrade to a new one and you wouldn't expect something as simple as lending a book to a friend to create any problems for you.
It might surprise you to learn, then, that the rights you are accustomed to when you buy traditional goods and services may not apply when you purchase digital products.
Vendors ought to study these ideas.
5:09:35 PM
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It seems that Apress is offering some of their older titles for free download. I snagged a copy of their "Programmers Introduction to PHP 4, " a 4 megabyte, 478 page PDF. It looks like the full version of the book. The download site also offers the source code. The book includes a plug for the newer edition of PHP5 and MySQL, released in June of 2004. This is a smart move on Apress' part. Hope it pans out for them financially.
8:54:50 AM
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Thursday, March 10, 2005 |
Computerworld News notes that "It's official: FBI scraps $170M Virtual Case File project. FBI Director Robert Mueller, in testimony yesterday before a House subcommittee, confirmed that the agency has scrapped its $170 million Virtual Case File initiative."
Another one for the record books, another huge project crashing against the rocks. I do wonder if projects this large have a tendency to fail at a greater rate or if it is "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" that attracts all of the attention. In nearly twenty years of software development, I've only been involved in a few projects that were shuttered before they shipped. My experience is anecdotal and statistically insignificant, of course. Has anyone managed to collect a broad study of size vs. success?
9:36:12 AM
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Wednesday, March 9, 2005 |
This morning somebody asked, "Do you compost?" "No," I replied. "I'm just aging normally." [The Doc Searls Weblog]
5:17:31 PM
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Tuesday, March 8, 2005 |
At the Intel Developer Forum last week, Intel showed off a concept home media case and got some attention from the trade press in a pitiful "Me, too!" effort to try to make Intel-based machines as cool as the Mac Mini.
"Thus far, the concept PC is just a piece of plastic, literally, although its design showed a clock display and optical drive in front, with ports such as USB, optical audio and FireWire in the back."
You wonder who they are learning innovation from...
Imitation may be flattery, but what's next? Intel imitation Rolexes?
Hint: it's not the pretty box. It's the features, the included software, the slick operating sytem that Just Works ™, the ease of use, the slick marketing and, yes, cachet that makes the Mac Mini what it is. The $499 (and up) price tag and the pretty box are just facets of that. Intel needs to learn to think different-ly.
10:22:17 AM
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Monday, March 7, 2005 |
Fixed the problem we ran into in last week's class, as detailed in the updated blog entry. As with most computer problems, it was just a matter of zeroing in on the symptoms, eliminating causes, researching, and then systematically changing settings until the problem was solved, reviewing, restesting. Took Bill and I around three hours this morning to nail it down.
The hard part is to not change six things and see if the problem goes away. Maybe it does, but you're no closer to knowing what caused the problem. Change one thing, test, change another, test, take notes. When you've got it working, unchange everying back and figure out which changes mattered and which didn't. Repeat on another system to confirm. Whew.
3:55:30 PM
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Sunday, March 6, 2005 |
The Doc Searls Weblog posts Markets are Relationships, Part N. "Anyway, here's the problem: Google is an advertising company, more than a search company. That's becoming clearer with this feature, and the company's apparent lack of interest in the feedback they've been getting."
Insightful column, with many references and links to other thinkers on this matter. I'll be interested in Google's response.
Doc missed the boat on the last item, though: "Note: Microsoft dropped whatever-it-was [later: SmartTags] that Autolink does as well. Why? Because Microsoft listened to its customers." I don't think so. I think Microsoft dropped SmartTags from IE and from visibility because they were taking too much flack in the media. Like HailStorm or Palladium or other MSFT maneuvers, they are alive and well and being repackaged, renamed and slip-streamed into other products. Keep an eye on them.
1:54:33 PM
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I've attended a couple of professional get-togethers lately (like BOFs Birds-Of-a-Feather at LinuxWorld) and running these meetings is tough. Typically, you've got a lot of smart people with a lot of interesting things to say, and a lot of smart people who might drag the discussion off-focus. Halley describes a classic problem here, but notes the next day that things are improving.
I'm hoping to make a few visits this year to what Dave Winer calls UnConferences, and hope the benevolent dictators in charge of these events take note. Imagine - a conference where people actually confer!
11:17:29 AM
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Saturday, March 5, 2005 |
Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc. blogs The Gathering Storms Over Speech. "Apple Computer's disgusting attack on three online journalism sites, in a witch hunt to find out who (if anyone) inside the company leaked information about allegedly upcoming products, has taken a nasty turn. Too bad it's not surprising -- and journalists of all kinds should be paying attention."
6:46:03 PM
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Breaking news... it appears that Symantec firewalls with DNS caching enabled have been exploited and are being used in a DNS cache poisoning scheme to redirect users to malicious sites where their machines are being exploited with ActiveX-containing toolbars. My suggestions:
- Disable DNS caching
- Replace the Symantec firewall if possible
- Stop using IE.
Details, sketchy as they are, at: http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2005-03-04
9:43:08 AM
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Friday, March 4, 2005 |
Over at FoxBlog, Craig complains "Shedding Some Light... ...that's the name of the new blog from VFP developer Rick Schummer. However, I can't add him to my blog roll. Why? No RSS feed. Now, it may be there, if given the proper URL, but it should be discoverable. I shouldn't have to guess where it is or go find it."
You can grab it off the blogroll to the right. It's a blogger thing, that they don't include the RSS link in a lot of their layouts. But it's in the source, in a meta tag in the header, and the better RSS readers will usually sniff it out if you point them to page. This is still one of those rough edges in RSS/blogging/aggregation.
6:17:37 PM
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The Fedora Core 3 Linux distribution includes a very powerful new security feature called SELinux. In my (very) limited understanding, SELinux overlays another set of policies and permissions over the basic UNIX-style security to produce a far more secure product. However, it can also trip up the unsuspecting. At last night's LAMP class, we got caught. Installing Virtual Hosts as we had with Fedora Core 2 threw permission errors, despite everything we could think of. As it was a beginner class, we just settled for placing the virtual hosts under the standard DocumentRoot at /var/www/html and continuing on with our exercise, with a promise that we'd investigate and explain to the students what went wrong at the next class.
The Fedora web site provides guidance at "Understanding and Customizing the Apache HTTP SELinux Policy." I was also pleased to see that a WebMin module is under development to simplify SElinux management at http://www.selinux.hitachi-sk.co.jp/en/tool/selpe/selpe-top.html
UPDATED: Indeed, it was the SELinux that was causing the problem. Turning that off (requiring one of the very rare reboots in the Linux world) and fixing a problem with rights (the parent home directory needs x permissions for searching, as pointed out in the Apache FAQ) solved the problem. We'll be able to present the solution to the class, along with a little side-talk on how to figure these things out, at the next class.
3:43:34 PM
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Rick Schummer announces "Rick Schummer has researched the blogging craze for more than a year to understand the advantages of this not-so-new approach to publishing ideas, thoughts, news, or whatever. After much thought and consideration, he has finally decided to jump into the blogosphere. You can read his postings (Shedding Some Light) on his personal site, RickSchummer.com."
Now, if Rick can only learn to stop referring to himself in the third-person... :)
3:11:06 PM
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Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley notes A Quiet Patch Tuesday on the Way. "Read our lips: No new Microsoft security patches next Tuesday."
Pretty hard to believe.
Don't mistake this for "there are no outstanding security problems" but rather "there are no solutions available for outstanding security problems." I'm sure there are folks in the back room in Redmond working hard to address them. All software has vulnerabilities. SANS has a great list of the Top 20.
2:50:06 PM
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Thursday, March 3, 2005 |
Lawrence Lessig in fine form in this Wired column: "You'll be pleased to know that communism was defeated in Pennsylvania last year. Governor Ed Rendell signed into law a bill prohibiting the Reds in local government from offering free Wi-Fi throughout their municipalities." {updated: fixed broken link}
3:10:34 PM
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Wednesday, March 2, 2005 |
Spent the day conferring with an associate up in Franconia, 100 miles north of the home office. Getting there involved traveling through Franconia Notch through the White Mountain National Forest. A winter storm made the driving pretty challenging, but the scenery was spectacular. Tremendous mountain views. Hope I get the chance to make the trip again when I can enjoy the view a bit more. (updated with links)
9:49:51 PM
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Tuesday, March 1, 2005 |
New Hampshire Public Radio - NHPR.org featured a show on their morning talk show, "The Exchange" hosted by Laura Knoy, titled Blogs of War. "Unheard of just a few years ago, these web journals set up by anyone with a story to tell…or an axe to grind….have brought down major media and picked on politicians, but now find the spotlight’s glare turned back on them."
Featured guests included Dan Gillmor and Dave Winer. You can listen to the show at the link above, via RealAudio or WindowsMedia.
11:53:49 AM
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