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Ted's Radio Weblog
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Saturday, July 30, 2005 |
OSNews points to a Groklaw article: Novell Files Countersuit Against SCO. "Today, Novell has answered SCO's complaint alledging Novell slandered SCO's ownership of the Unix copyrights. Novell claims that SCO approached Novell in 2003 to try and pursuade them to go along with the Linux Licensing Scheme. When Novell refused, SCO attempted to talk Novell into transfering the Unix Copyrights to SCO, which Novell also refused to do. Novell has also filed four counterclaims against SCO, one of them being Slander of Title (for SCO slandering Novell's ownership of the Unix Copyrights)."
Delicious. If accepted, Novell should earn all the monies SCO got from "licensing" rights to software it didn't own, plus penalties. Looking forward to the next step.
5:56:37 PM 
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Friday, July 29, 2005 |
 Slashdot post: Firefox Downloads Reach 75 Million. "Today Mozilla Firefox has reached its 75 millionth download. The Mozilla staff find this a morale booster since recent security vulnerabilities have slightly lowered the browser's growth rate. 'We're beefing up the management on the project. The project is still very healthy. We're seeing continued corporate interest and have a lot of large organizations that want to do deployments,' said Chris Hoffman."
3:55:02 PM
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Wednesday, July 27, 2005 |
Following up on my response to Alex Feldstein's post on Greasemonkey security warning, Jon Udell posts his weekly column today, "Greasemonkey in crisis:
A hole in a Firefox plug-in proves that no one, not even open source partisans, have all the answers" with several insightful comments:
This time there was no Microsoft to blame. The open source underdogs had done this to themselves.
How can sandboxed environments sufficiently empower developers while preserving meaningful isolation of risk? ... There are no perfect answers to these questions.
11:28:21 AM
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Doc Searls' IT Garage - notes Barning Creative Commons. "John C. Dvorak is one of the most interesting, informative and entertaining journalists in the history of the computer business. He is also something of a troll."
To think at one time my career aspiration was to be the next Dvorak. Luckily, I got over it. Sadly, John never did.
P.S. If that one doesn't hit your hot button, try "Windows Vista: Where's the Buzz?" At least John's an equal-opportunity troll.
11:21:15 AM
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Tuesday, July 26, 2005 |
OSNews points to an article that tells you how to Boot Fedora Linux Faster. "Everyone wants a quick boot time, from the beginner user to the advanced user, this is a issue that bothers us all. As Linux has advanced it has increasingly become slower to boot. So I decided to look into reducing the time it takes to boot my current setup, which is Fedora 4. In doing so I was able to reduce the boot time of my Fedora 4 installation to less than 25 seconds."
You can never have too much RAM, too slim a laptop or too fast a boot-up sequence!
7:42:22 PM
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At Shedding Some Light, Rick Schummer blogs Godspeed Discovery! "The launch of Discovery this morning was spectacular as expected taking 7 new heroes back to space. This is the second time Discovery has healed the space program as it followed Challenger into space back in 1988." Godspeed, indeed.
6:09:26 PM
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OSNews points to an eWeek article, Microsoft Lowers the Boom on Illegal Windows Copies. "Microsoft is tightening the noose for those people running illegal or pirated copies of its Windows XP/2000 software on their systems. Starting Tuesday, it will be mandatory for users of this Windows software to certify that their software is a genuine and legal copy before they will be able to receive any updates except security patches."
This just has Bad Idea written all over it. Copy Protection (and this is just a delayed form of Copy Protection) inevitably takes out some innocent bystanders while the really serious pirates work around it. (The first PC software I bought was CopyIIPC so that I could make backup copies of the company's Lotus 1-2-3 key disks, since the employees were always destroying disks.) Some of Microsoft's customers will end up in a situation where the "Windows Genuine Advantage" package, in an effort to enhance their experience, stops them from doing what they legitimately need to get done. More collateral damage. We've all ended up in a situation where Windows demands "Office CD 2" or that you type in some product key thats back in the office a thousand miles away. From the article:
Microsoft has also made changes to streamline the process, including no longer requiring customers to enter their product key since the ActiveX control used to validate their software can now automatically determine whether they have a genuine Windows product.
Oh, that should work fine.
3:45:44 PM
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(InfoWorld) - "Netscape has released a series of fixes for serious security flaws in its browser and, incredibly, listed a further 10 that it has yet to patch."
12:30:05 PM
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Computerworld News notes Microsoft could face trademark fight over Vista OS name. "John Wall, CEO of Vista Inc., said his company is "considering all of its options" for a potential lawsuit against Microsoft, which last week announced that the next version of its operating system would be called Windows Vista."
Not surprising that the name was already taken. We'll have to see if Microsoft can argue their trademark is sufficiently different.
12:28:18 PM
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Computerworld News notes Oracle releases security patch fixes; MySQL flaw surfaces. "Oracle has released two sets of database patches to correct flaws in previously released security patches, including on that was itself a fix to an earlier set of patches."
Oracle is patching their patches, too.
MySQL is up to 4.1.13 to avoid a buffer overrun in the zlib library. Consider updating, especially if you're exposing your db directly to the internet.
12:26:19 PM
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The ever-snarky Andrew Orlowski points out in the Register that Microsoft is shipping an anti-spyware tool (they bought, not developed) based on the abandoned, unsupported and generally disrespected Visual Basic 6.0. Perhaps they should consider rewriting it in Visual FoxPro...
12:08:43 PM
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Monday, July 25, 2005 |
Dave Winer at Scripting News points to MacWorld: "Yahoo on Monday will announce the acquisition of Konfabulator, a Macintosh and Windows application that allows users to run mini files known as Widgets on their desktop -- the same model used by Apple for its Dashboard application."
Platform-agnostic applets that run on every desktop could be yet another challenge to proprietary OS vendors like Apple, Microsoft and Sun, along with web-based applications.
10:31:26 AM
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Slashdot "Your Rights Online" section asks Canadian Telco Admits to Blocking Union's Website. Nogami_Saeko writes "Canadian telephone company and ISP "Telus" has admitted that they are blocking all attempts to access a website set up by the employee's union (who is currently "on-strike" or "locked-out", depending on your point of view). Currently no customers of the Telco's ADSL service (or any other ADSL service provider who leases lines) can access the union's webpage. Is it reasonable for an ISP to censor webpages they don't agree with during contract negotiations?"
10:12:25 AM
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Sunday, July 24, 2005 |
At Scripting News, Dave Winer posts  "If all goes well, the OPML Editor will be available publicly on Monday. I fixed a couple of important bugs today, one involved rewriting the startup process, which was horribly wrong. I had to take the time to understand the issues, and now I just can't break it and so far neither have any of the testers been able to. I'm very excited about this release, it's the first time I did roadshows before a release, and it's looking like I'll be able to do one in Toronto after the release, next week. So you could say it's an international rollout, and you'd be right. I was careful to explain in the Terms of Service that it's all for evaluation purposes, and I'll note here that the back end will be GPL'd too, so people will have choice about where to serve their OPML. So we're about to get an upgrade in the part of the web we use. That doesn't happen every day, not even every year." [Emphasis mine]
Eagerly looking forward to it.
11:01:28 AM
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Slashdot posts Why I Hate the Apache Web Server. schon writes "Today's the last day of ApacheCon Europe; There was a hilarious presentation entitled 'Why I Hate the Apache Web Server' [note: PDF] for anyone who has expressed frustration with the various inconsistencies and nuances of the Internet's favourite config file. And yes, it includes a comparison to Sendmail."
Authored by Apache contributor Rich Bowen, who collected the FAQs from the Apache IRC chat channel. Every language has these kinks, trying to remember the strange, arbitrary, mis-named and archaic commands. Anyone who has had to tweak Apache has probably run into one or more of these.
10:29:29 AM
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Friday, July 22, 2005 |
http://www.betanews.com/article/Longhorn_Gets_a_Name_Windows_Vista/1122002477
Imagine, a Windows product that has been in beta so long that they throw out its codename 17 months before it is even due to ship! Anyone taking bets that this test balloon falls over from high lead content and Microsoft Windows 2006+ (TPFKAL - The Product Formerly Known As Longhorn) gets yet another name? Besides "#$%&@!? Windows," which is pretty much what every copy gets called, of course.
6:00:25 PM
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Thursday, July 21, 2005 |
Interesting juxtaposition here. The Open Source Development Lab, a small group located in the Northwest US, posted a roadmap titled "OSDL's Linux Initiatives."
Nearly simultaneously, Information Week carries a 9 page story "Microsoft Lays Out Enterprise Roadmap," where the lead paragraph reads:
Microsoft is making big promises about Longhorn and other product development, but will it deliver? We spoke with company execs about initiatives in security, server operating systems, storage, convergence and more.
OSDL is just one small group, advancing their own agenda of tools and utilities, with an obvious focus on making the platform more reliable, appealing and robust for a variety of vendors to deploy upon. Microsoft, in contrast, strikes me as withdrawing within a fortress of their own making tying together their tools ever more tightly. The Information Week interviews a number of high-placed Microsofties and each seems to have their own agenda, plans and acronyms (and titles, too!). Don't miss the last two pages of the Information Week piece with some surprising survey results sure to delight partisans on both sides of the debate.
3:03:14 PM
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Wednesday, July 20, 2005 |
Rick Schummer notes Bill Gates is puzzled by computer science apathy: "This is a headline in this morning's Great Lakes IT Report: "Bill Gates is puzzled by computer science apathy." I also read a couple of news items with the same story yesterday. If he wants to understand it, all he has to do is sit down with some high school students and he will get his answer. I have and can tell you there are several reasons."
1:34:57 PM
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Slashdot posts: Google Moon Debuts. Ian writes "From the FAQ: 'One small step for Google... On July 20, 1969, man first landed on the Moon. A few decades later, we're pleased to cut you in on the action. Google Moon is an extension of Google Maps and Google Earth that, courtesy of NASA imagery (thanks, guys!), enables you to surf the Moon's surface and check out the exact spots that the Apollo astronauts made their landings.'"
Very cool. I have the fondest memories of Dad waking me up around 2 AM and propping me up before a snowy black-and-white TV in the summer cottage we rented to watch a couple of astronauts in bulky suits bounce around, falling impossibly slowly, on the surface of the moon. Mankind had stepped upon another world.
1:05:49 PM
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 Slashdot notes Firefox and Thunderbird 1.0.6 Released. micpp writes "Only a short time after the release of version 1.0.5, Mozilla has released version 1.0.6 of both Firefox and Thunderbird . This update fixes a bug in the browser and email program which prevented some extensions from working."
Oops. Sometimes the cure is almost as bad as the disease. The developers jumped a bit too fast on this one, patching 1.0.4 with a buggy 1.0.5. All sorts of flap resulted, international releases were frozen, feelings were hurt, nasty things posted to forums.
Bugs patched. Get your new release.
10:08:04 AM
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Tuesday, July 19, 2005 |
Despite Microsoft's attempt to, er, monopolize the security news...
Alex Feldstein posts Attention Greasemonkey Users. "There's a serious security issue for Greasemonkey. Until I can study this in more detail, and as my use of GreaseMonkey is very minimal, I have chosen to disable it. (Via J-Walk)"
As best I've been able to ascertain, the problem occurs in versions before 0.34 and possibly also in the 0.4 alpha, but 0.35 is okay. The GreaseMoney add-in shows a little monkey face on the bottom of the browser. Click to toggle whether it is disabled, and only turn it on when you need it and trust the underlying page. You may also want to consider adding the NOSCRIPT add-on, which lets you specify which sites ought to be allowed to run JavaScript at all.
4:18:03 PM
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Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports Microsoft Suggests Workarounds to Block SP2 Flaw. "Microsoft released a security advisory and some suggested workarounds for a new potential denial-of-service flaw in Windows XP SP2."
It's a good idea to double-check systems that ought to have RDP disabled. As part of chasing down a different problem, I was reviewing the Services tab of a WinXP workstations's Adminstration interface, and noted all the Terminal Services items running. Disable Remote access on an individual box by right-clicking "My Computer" and selecting "Properties." On the "Remote" tab, ensure the "Allow users to connect remotely to this computer" is off.
3:30:44 PM
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Monday, July 18, 2005 |
Computerworld News notes Microsoft warns of remote access protocol flaw. "Microsoft is warning users that a flaw in the software used to remotely access computers running the Windows OS could leave them vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack."
This is the RDP flaw I blogged last week. Affected machine include Win2K as well. It appears that scanning for the affected port is on the increase, too, according to the Internet Storm Center. I'm advising clients to turn off port 3389 at the firewall, and only enable it (via ssh, for example) when needed.
4:55:09 PM
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Andy Kramek posts a follow-up to his well-received essay: "Well, my little article on “Whither .NET” certainly prompted a variety of responses! I suppose it was to be expected that most of my regular readers are fellow FoxPro travelers and are probably pre-disposed to agree with my point of view. However what I found revealing was the comments from some people who obviously read something into my article that simply was not there."
2:01:37 PM
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Compare and contrast:
Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Patriot Act Section 213: With respect to the issuance of any warrant or court order under this section, or any other rule of law, to search for and seize any property or material that constitutes evidence of a criminal offense in violation of the laws of the United States, any notice required, or that may be required, to be given may be delayed if--
(1) the court finds reasonable cause to believe that providing immediate notification of the execution of the warrant may have an adverse result (as defined in section 2705);
(2) the warrant prohibits the seizure of any tangible property, any wire or electronic communication (as defined in section 2510), or, except as expressly provided in chapter 121, any stored wire or electronic information, except where the court finds reasonable necessity for the seizure; and
(3) the warrant provides for the giving of such notice within a reasonable period of its execution, which period may thereafter be extended by the court for good cause shown.'.
-- Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT)
There's loads more good info at the ACLU's Reform the Patriot Act website. Read, heed, and contact your Senators.
"He who would give up Liberty in exchange for temporary security, deserves neither
Liberty nor security" -- Benjamin Franklin.
10:43:22 AM
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Sunday, July 17, 2005 |
Slashdot carries a discussion that starts Time for a Linux Consolidation?. An anonymous reader writes "Are there too many Linux distributions currently available?" As always, with Slashdot, there's a tradeoff between how long you want to read the answers and how much you trust their system of peer ratings. I like a threshold of 4, myself.
This is an interesting syndrome I've seen happen a number of times. Folks who perceive themselves to be trapped in the One Microsoft Way choice of operating systems, office products, PIMs and development tools long for the "freedom" of choosing other packages, ignoring the fact that they are implicitly choosing Microsoft over WordPerfect, SmartSuite, Delphi, BASIC, PostgreSQL and dozens of other choices. But when faced with the actual choice -- Red Hat Enterprise or SuSE? Mandrake? Connectiva? Debian or Ubuntu? -- they complain that there are "too many choices." Utter nonsense. People chose to create yet another PIM for a reason. They may not have liked the options available, they may not have gotten along with the developers, they may wanted one specific feature or they may just have been ignorant of what was available. It's up to the discerning consumer to figure out their optimal choice. Me, I think there's too much shelf space devoted to high-frutose corn syrup and colored water, but bottlers seem to keep "innovating."
4:46:28 PM
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OSNews notes Windows RDP Exploit Discovered. "A denial of service vulnerability reportedly affects the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol." OS News goes on to advise, "Either disable RDP or make sure you have a firewall enabled for port 3389 until a fix is available." This is nonsensical advice. First, if you have "a firewall enabled for port 3389," does that mean the process can't go through the port. If so, what's the point of running Remote Access?
The report does not identify the problem as something that could allow a malicious attacker to take over your machine, only inconvenience you with a denial of service issue, or possibly shutting down your machine. Obviously, you should turn off Remote Desktop access if you don't need it.
There's a stunning note on the Microsoft Security Advisory linked from the OSNews article: "Remote Desktop is enabled by default on Windows XP Media Center Edition." What on earth were they thinking, by enabling a remote access interface on a OS designed to be used as standalone home media appliances? Is this Trustworthy Computing? Not even close.
8:32:36 AM
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Saturday, July 16, 2005 |
Alex Feldstein blogs Securing RSS with Bloglines & GreaseMonkey. "What can you do if you wanted to syndicate data securely? Say you wanted to distribute company information but only the intended recipients could read it. Securing RSS Syndication, an article in O'Reilly's XML.com explains that it is possible, in a way, to do just that today using Bloglines and GreaseMonkey, an extension to the Firefox browser. (Via IO Error)"
AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) provides a runtime environment within the browser that lets you use some of the power of the local workstation. I've been using GreaseMonkey and a GreaseMap Javascript add-on to FireFox to show Google maps in a banner when I navigate to a site that includes location metadata. Very cool.
AJAX isn't new. Google uses something similar to provide a rich client experience in their mail client. The components have been around for a while. Leading-edge columnists like Jon Udell have been talking this stuff up for a while. Note that the Fox wiki has some good links too.
10:03:14 AM
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Friday, July 15, 2005 |
OSNews points to a Wired story, What if You Threw a Tradeshow and Nobody Came?. "Macworld Boston ended yesterday. Didn't realize it was going on at all? You're in good company. Since Apple didn't have a presence there and there was no Steve Jobs rock concert product announcement, nobody paid much attention to the Mac-oriented trade show, notes Wired News."
Ow. I had intended to go, but only dug up the Expo materials too late to get in for free. They were charging $15 for last minute Expo admission, and it's just not worth that much to pay for people to try to sell you something.
4:42:28 PM
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Slashdot and OSNews point the The Register which in turn points to Groklaw with the newsflash: SCO Knew Linux Doesn't Infringe - Memo. "SCO's CEO Darl McBride was told that the Linux kernel contained no SCO copyright code six months before the company issued its first lawsuit, a memo reveals. An outside consultant Bob Swartz conducted the audit, and on August 13 2002 Caldera's Michael Davidson reported the results."
Slashdot points to Unsealed SCO Email Reveals Linux Code is Clean. rm69990 writes "In a recently unsealed email in the SCO vs. IBM case, it appears that an outside consultant, hired by SCO in 2002, failed to find copyright violations in the Linux Kernel. This was right around the time Darl McBride, who has before been hired by litigious companies as CEO, was hired. It appears that before SCO even began its investigation, they were hoping to find a smoking gun, not believing that Linux could possibly not contain Unix code. Apparently, they ignored the advice of this consultant."
So, SCO's own study couldn't find infringing Linux code.
12:52:28 PM
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IBM Officially Kills OS/2. boarder8925 writes "'Big Blue has hammered the final nails into OS/2's coffin. It said that all sales of OS/2 will end on the 23rd of December this year, and support for the pre-emptive multitasking operating system will end on the 31st December 2006.' IBM has posted a migration page to help OS/2 users easily switch to Linux." [Slashdot]
7:42:36 AM
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Thursday, July 14, 2005 |
Asa Dotzler opines that Linux not ready for the desktop, surely not the first to have that opinion, but he identified four areas where he felt improvement was necessary:
1. Migration: Asa suggests that Linux install side-by-side on a Windows machine and read all the settings and preferences and set the same on the Linux side. While this sounds like a killer feature, I've found most people haven't even set much beyond the defaults, and those who have are comfortable enough with the concept to customize their software again. Switching from Windows to Linux (or Mac) is also not a one-for-one match and new capabilities in the software need to be discovered, too. A "Migration Wizard" could be a killer app for the Aunt Tillies of the world, who'd like it to just work for them, but for corporate environments where much is pre-set for the user, IT should be able to script a similar though perhaps not as thorough effect.
2. Stability: by stability, Asa is referring to what Windows users call DLL Hell: the problems with library dependency conflicts between different software installs. This is a universal problem with computers, and Linux is no further along a solution than Microsoft is. The simple answer is to stay within the lines and only install the software that your distribution's installer has to offer. That's a pretty frustrating answer, but the major distros do supply a vast array of software these days.
3. Complexity: Asa seems to be complaining that there are too many configuration choices. Freedom to configure the software the way you want is an advantage, but the difficulty of supporting clients who have tinkered with their settings is a counterbalance. Again, this is a universal challenge: have you taken a look at many tabs in Tools|Options in Word lately? Too many choices! Unless they don't have the one you want...
4. Comfort: "The final major issue is comfort. Linux must feel comfortable to Windows users." I have to respectfully disagree. People can learn to adjust, and most do. Witness the radical and sometimes trivially silly differences in UI between Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 2000 and XP. The world didn't end because Microsoft installed a Teletubbies background on top of a Candyland theme, and hid common options five layers down behind difficult-to-navigate cascading menus and modal dialogs. People can learn to adjust, and that needs to be factored in to the transition process, along with a patient teacher and helpful support available. To duplicate the UI that Microsoft rolled out (and which version?) may aid in muscle-memory exercises, but it doesn't open up the minds to new possibilities. Apple argues you should "Think Different" and the effect on many switchers -- the It Just Works Effect - argues they have done a better job of the Computer-Human Interaction design than Microsoft did.
3:13:12 PM
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The next meeting of the Monadnock Linux User Group (MonadLUG) will be this Thursday, July 14th, 7:00pm, at the SAU 1 Superintendent's Office behind South Meadow School in Peterborough. Google map here.
This is a combined meeting with CentraLUG (of the Concord area) and will feature guest speaker Ira Krakow, discussing WINE and running Windows applications on Linux. Ira will present an overview of Wine, which enables Windows applications to run in Linux, and Winelib, which enables Windows application sources to compile and run on Linux. Ira discusses Wine and Winelib, which make it possible to run some Windows applications on Linux, and to more easily port applications that were originally written for a Windows platform.
He'll also touch on other projects that can help an enterprise overcome its Windows dependencies, such as ReactOS (the open source port of Windows NT), MinGW (the port of GCC for Windows programs), and Mono (essentially, Wine for .NET and C#). Ira is currently co- authoring a book for Prentice-Hall, on Wine and Winelib; his co- author is Brian Vincent.
9:12:45 AM
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Wednesday, July 13, 2005 |
"iTunes has done what possibly no one else could have accomplished, propelled Podcasting into the mainstream," said Will Lewis, management consultant for KCRW.
Whodathunkit?
6:07:39 PM
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InfoWorld: Top News reports Patches issued for Kerberos flaws. "The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has issued patches for three serious flaws in Kerberos v5, a widely used security authentication system. The worst of the flaws could allow an attacker to gain access to an entire authentication realm, according to MIT."
Ouch! That's a critical patch, too!
2:23:37 PM
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Patches are flying in from everywhere! Mozilla patches FireFox and Thunderbird, Oracle issues 50 patches, and Microsoft releases its monthly batch, including a critical one ("Remote Code Execution" - from a word processor!) that affects Word 2000 and 2002. Also, Apple releases OS X Tiger 10.4.2 with its own security updates.
InfoWorld reports Mozilla patches bugs in Firefox, Thunderbird. "The Mozilla Foundation on Tuesday fixed a number of security bugs in its Firefox Web browser, many of which will also be patched in upcoming releases of Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail client and Mozilla Internet software suite."
Also in InfoWorld, Oracle releases critical security updates. "Oracle has released its latest quarterly batch of security updates, offering fixes for several dozen security flaws in its database, application server, business applications, and other products."
Microsoft re-released MS05-033, a patch for their Services for UNIX 2.0, as well as MS05-035, the Word 2000 and 2002 vulnerability, MS05-036, another remote code exploit vulnerability affecting Windows 2000 and later (and likely the unsupported Win98 and ME as well) and MS05-037, yet another remote code exploit vulnerability in JView. Read all the details in the Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for July, 2005
[UPDATE] Office Watch (formerly Woody's Office Watch) notes that the exploit affects Microsoft Works 2002, 2003, 2004 and Works Suite 2000 and 2001.
Not to feel left out, Apple joins in with an update to OS X Tiger to version 10.4.2. Here's what the Software Update widget says:
"The 10.4.2 Update delivers overall improved reliability and compatibility for Mac OS X v10.4 and is recommended for all users. It includes fixes for:
- file sharing using AFP and SMB/CIFS network file services
- single sign-on authentication and reliable access to Active Directory servers
- autologin for managed user accounts
- AirPort and wireless access
- Core Graphics, Core Audio, Core Image, including updated ATI and NVIDIA graphics drivers
- Finder updates including finding on Kind and using Slideshow
synchronizing your iDisk with .Mac
- installation reliability
- managing Dashboard widgets
- Address Book, Automator, iCal, iChat, Mail, Safari, and Stickies applications
compatibility with third party applications and devices
"For detailed information on this Update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n301722. For detailed information on Security Updates, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798"
10:16:35 AM
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Tuesday, July 12, 2005 |
Jon's Radio blogs LAMP and WAMP:
"Although LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/Python/PHP) is often synonymous with open source, Windows can be a solid leg supporting the platform. The rising popularity of PHP on Windows servers is one indication of this trend. To zealots in both camps this may look like an unholy alliance, but I live in both camps and it makes perfect sense to me.... In some ways Windows and open source are fellow travelers, and have been for a long time." [Full story at InfoWorld.com]
6:20:47 PM
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Monday, July 11, 2005 |
Alex Feldstein blogs "Andy Kramek, a well-known software developer writes a very insightful article on why .NET could be a big problem and a failure for Microsoft. He contends, that aside from ASP.NET (which is what ASP should have been from the beginning), there is no compelling reason for developers to jump to .NET... I tend to agree."
10:45:16 PM
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In the original post, I showed a simple Visual FoxPro program to generate a week's worth of activity history from Visual SourceSafe. Andrew MacNeill observed that it would not work for him, as he was supporting more than one database. Here's one solution: change the original program from shelling out with a single command. Instead, generate a batch file, and then execute it. Here's a sample:
SET TEXTMERGE TO VSSHIST.BAT
SET TEXTMERGE ON NOSHOW
\ SET SSDIR=C:\MY DOCUMENTS\SOURCESAFE
\ SET VSSEXEDIR=C:\PROGRAM FILES\VSS\WIN32
\ %VSSEXEDIR%\ss history $/ -R -vd <<DTOC(DATE())>>~<<DTOC(DATE()-7)>> -B -O@History.txt
SET TEXTMERGE OFF
SET TEXTMERGE TO
!VSSHIST.BAT
SET SSDIR=
SET VSSExeDir=
[UPDATED]: My blogging software made mincemeat out of the slashes, greater-than and less-than signs. Copy with care, and proof your result.
The SSDIR environment variable is recognized the the SS.EXE SourceSafe command-line executable: if set, it points to the SRCSAFE.INI file and the location of the data files SourceSafe is to operate on. The second environment variable, VSSExeDir is one I use to simplify the batch file, but putting the absolute path to the SourceSafe executables in one place, you can refer to it within the file, and only need to change it in one place should you change paths. Think #DEFINE in other languages.
11:20:35 AM
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Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley notes Feeding the Voracious Microsoft Beast. "Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer may love Microsoft's partners. But that doesn't mean he has any trepidation about continuing to chip away at their markets."
Microsoft has always loved their partners: they're crunchy and taste good with ketchup.
It's pretty well-known that announcing a "strategic partnership" with Microsoft means, if you're lucky, the company will get swallowed whole and you might walk away with cash or, if you're less lucky, Microsoft will suck the blood, sweat and tears out of the company and leave a cold dead husk. With maybe a shot at an intellectual property infringement suit and a billion-dollar out of court settlement. And maybe not.
11:05:54 AM
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OSNews points to a great TipMonkies piece on Writing Linux Firewall Rules With IPTables. "If you use Linux a good deal, you should know how to set up a firewall to help protect your system and your network. This tutorial will guide you through the steps you should take in order to makes IPTables work for you."
10:08:14 AM
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Andrew follows up on my 30 June post on Ted Roche - Building SourceSafe Activity Reports using VFP. "Ted hasn't updated this yet but his code for generating weekly activity reports from Visual SourceSafe is going to help me out plenty... We had to make some adjustments for databases that are not stored in the root directory (mine are stored in another folder)."
Well, actually, the problem is that the code as written in the original post assumed that the SourceSafe client on the machine running the report was set up to point to the repository of SourceSafe data by default - an obscure registry setting. If not, use the trick in Andrew's post to set the SSDIR environment variable to point to the SourceSafe repository of interest. Also, it's a very good idea to run this on the local machine with the SourceSafe repository, as network traffic can slow the performance by orders of magnitude. Andrew goes on to note:
"By the way, Ted's work is licensed with Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License,... If you use it, great. If you fix it, pass the fixes along using the same license. A great approach for offering code. " My thoughts exactly.
9:13:18 AM
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Friday, July 8, 2005 |
I had the privilege last night of speaking to the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Linux User Group, one of five chapters of the Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group on the installation, configuration and management of WebMin, a Perl-based, BSD-licensed tool for remote, secure, web-based management of many, many different modules in a Linux/Unix/HP-UX/Solaris system. This is a great tool, providing a simple, discoverable, explorable GUI for systems controlled by sometimes-obscure text configuration files. Text files are superior to an opaque "Registry" but having a GUI as well is the best of both worlds! My slides and notes are available for viewing from the tedroche.com whitepapers site, written in Eric Meyer's great S5: Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System - a single HTML page, a couple of magic CSS files and a couple of images give you a slide show with keyboard shortcuts, a handout/slideshow view toggle and a popup menu (move your mouse to the lower right corner) to navigate to any slide. Slick stuff, elegantly simple to use.
3:30:12 PM
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Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports Microsoft Reconfirms Longhorn Targets. "Beta 1 of Longhorn is still on track for this summer, Sanjay Parthasarathy reiterated that Longhorn Beta 1, which will not include the new user interface bits, is due this summer. Beta 2, which will showcase the new interface, is due out some time in the first part of 2006. The final Longhorn client release is still, as of now, due out in the latter half of 2006."
Isn't that curious. Microsoft has previously used "Beta" like much of the rest of the software industry for a feature-complete product with testing required but all major features in place. In particular, Microsoft's "Marketing Betas" to the public were primarily used by the MS Marketing teams to determine how to pitch the product and how to respond the the FAQs. This beta is more likely what most would consider an alpha, with features yet to be completed, making evaluation of the product more difficult. This comes across to me as primarily a PR effort to show that Microsoft is still in the game. With the dropping/delay of major features (WinFS), release of others separate from the Longhorn OS (Avalon and Monad) and the addition of others (RSS), Longhorn still feels like too much of a moving target and not a product with a fixed feature list. It will be interesting to read how the industry press reviews this "beta."
1:14:30 PM
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Thursday, July 7, 2005 |
Ars Technica notes Florida man charged with felony for wardriving. "Be careful accessing those unprotected WAPs, especially if you live in Florida. A man was recently arrested for accessing an open access point in an apartment complex." By eric@arstechnica.com (Eric Bangeman).
So, receiving radio waves that someone else broadcasts is illegal? No. Responding to them? No. Using a device designed for connection that's not encrypted? No. This isn't the same as barging onto your neighbor's property and plugging your appliance into his electrical socket. If the interceptor was attempting to break into a computer or perform some illegal act, well, maybe. It's hard to even see this as a theft of services when they are being broadcast and the supplier isn't paying any more for its use by others.
It will be interesting to see if this case goes anywhere...
2:01:00 PM
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Slashdot posts Project Gizmo Challenges Skype. valmont writes "The Register is offering an interesting introduction to Project Gizmo, a new player in the Voice over IP field, poised to challenge Skype with its ability to interoperate with others thanks to the SIP protocol it complies to. Whereas Skype has selectively licensed usage of an API that offers limited insight into a closed protocol, a closed ecosystem solely controlled by one organization, the SIP protocol is open. Free open-source proxy/server implementations are sprouting up, and many developers are actively working on SIP clients. The Gizmo Project is the first to bring a truly-usable, user-friendly, cross-platform SIP client (Mac, Windows, Linux coming soon) to market. Meanwhile, theappleblog.com is already offering a Gizmo Project Wish-List to promote better interoperability between current and upcoming SIP providers, to make it more practical for users of disparate SIP clients to communicate with one another."
VOIP is hot and up-and-coming. Vonnage, Skype and Gizmo show some exciting promise to break the system of what ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe called the "teloply" - the phone company model of 30-year investment cycles on the huge telephone infrastructure. The telco's lack of agility in deploying new functionality have slowed the rollout of technology in the US, leaving us behind Korea and Finland and others. The telcos have twisted pair copper wire into every home in America. Why aren't they providing 100 Mbps Ethernet to the home at $20/mo?
VOIP isn't an end-all and be-all just yet: be aware that 911 services are rarely available. Maintaining at least one landline to the home is wise. But moving your second or third phone line or SOHO business to VOIP is a no-brainer.
9:19:47 AM
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Wednesday, July 6, 2005 |
OSNews reports Microsoft Posts Tablet PC Fix. "On Tuesday, Microsoft posted a patch to its web site designed to prevent the problem, known as a memory leak. This error has plagued Microsoft's Tablet PC operating system for a long time. In addition, the software giant has promised not to charge for security fixes, but will charge for virus protection."
5:24:20 PM
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Slashdot reports EU Says No To Software Patents. "Moggie68 writes "European parliament has struck down the proposal for a directive that would have brought US-style software patents into EU."
This sounds good. From my layman's point of view, I think patents are not healthy in the software industry. Others disagree, and I'll try to dig up some links to post here, comments I've seen that patents may in fact be to the advantage of Open Source. At the least, this is a rejection of a proposal that the European Parliament legal subcommittee had rejected, and was mired in parliamentary moves to resurrect. Let's hope that the EU can find a rational and legitimate way to choose patents or not, and not a means as slipshod as that used here.
3:55:50 PM
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eWeek reports: "Published reports that Microsoft is in discussions to purchase high-profile adware vendor Claria for as much as $500 million have set tongues wagging in the security sector, with analysts and vendors questioning the software giant's motives and whether the deal will actually occur."
Wow. What can you say? I suppose Claria is one of the biggest users of Windows...
2:06:33 PM
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Tuesday, July 5, 2005 |
Back in June, Dave Winer blogged about the obnoxiously large picture ads in the InfoWorld RSS feed: "Today I unsubbed from a feed because its ads were too big in relation to the value of the content."
I agreed with Dave's sentiment. The ads are large and distracting. I regularly read the InfoWorld articles online (I also subscribe to the print magazine), so I get plenty of "impressions" from the ads. I much prefer the RSS feed to be a plain-text lead that tells me what the story is about so I can decide to go to their web site and read the story. My click on their link is my consent to subject myself to their profit-making ads, in exchange for an interesting and relevant article. My subscription to their RSS feed should not be. Adding insult to injury, they include a couple lines of text ad at the bottom of each article, doubling their hit rate at subscriber expense. That said, it is small, text-based, and clearly set off with "ADVERTISEMENT." I'll take those over the gaudy bandwidth-wasting graphics any time.
A quick Google of "InfoWorld site:scripting.com" shows that Dave cites them as a source over seven hundred times, a pretty valuable set of links from a highly-ranked source.
I hope InfoWorld reconsiders the over-commercialization of their feed, and goes back to enticing us to their web site instead.
12:27:49 PM
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Friday, July 1, 2005 |
OSNews reports Sun 'Distorts' Definition Of Free Software. "Sun's president Jonathan Schwartz has angered some in the free software community for appearing to misrepresent what open source is. In Schwartz's opening keynote at the JavaOne conference on Monday he spoke about how free price is the most important feature of free and open source software." It's sad to see this myth continued, and a frustrating misunderstanding. Open Source Software is Free-To-Change, Free-To-Use-The-Way-You-Want, Modifiable, Manipulable, Free-From-Legal-Claims, Free-To-Share, Liberated. Free was such a loaded word to choose. Bummer
6:16:48 PM
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Garrett Fitzgerald's Blog notes Rhode Island government on the net. The Rhode Island state government has an API!
It is simply unacceptable at this point in history that a citizen can use web services to track the movies he is renting, the weather around his house, and the books he's recently purchased but cannot as easily monitor data regarding the quality of his drinking water, legislation or regulations that will directly impact his work or personal life, what contracts are currently available to bid on for his state, or what crimes have recently occurred on his street.
Cool!
4:49:44 PM
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Computerworld News notes Update: Microsoft to pay IBM $775M in antitrust settlement. "Microsoft and IBM have agreed on a $775 million settlement in IBM's private antitrust case against Microsoft... Including today's settlement, Microsoft has paid about $4.5 billion in antitrust claims following the U.S. government case. Pending antitrust lawsuits include those brought by RealNetworks Inc., Novell Inc. and Go Corp."
Wow. For some companies, $4,500,000,000 would be a lot of money.
So, is this TrustWorthy Computing -- some kind of Anti-anti-trust?
4:37:37 PM
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