W3C 'clarifies' HTML 5 v XHTML
Potential conflicts and overlap between the first update to HTML in a decade by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and XHTML has been addressed by the standards body. The group, meanwhile, has also acknowledged vendors are - once again - pushing their own platform-specific technologies, this time on RIA, with the standards process unable to keep up. This poses a problem on interoperability.
Debian fumble jeopardizes all sshd-equipped servers
As has been widely reported, the maintainers of Debian's OpenSSL packages made some errors recently that have potentially compromised the security of any sshd-equipped system used remotely by Debian users. System administrators may wish to purge authorized_key files of public keys generated since 2006 by affected client machines. Simply using a Debian-based machine to access a remote server via SSH would not be enough to put the machine at risk. However, if the user copied a public key generated on a Debian-based system to the remote server, for example to take advantage of the higher security offered by password-free logins, then the weak key could make the server susceptible to brute-force attacks, especially if the user's name is easily guessable.
Five Reasons Red Hat Should Ignore Consumer Linux Desktops
Are you still begging Red Hat to offer Linux on consumer PCs? Here are five reasons why that's a terrible idea, according to The VAR Guy.
Keeping your SSH connections alive with autossh
With autossh, you can monitor your SSH connections and restart them if they stop sending traffic or SSH exits abnormally. This makes autossh perfect for keeping secure port forwarding available. Some readers will be familiar with the TCPKeepAlive, ServerAliveInterval, and ServerAliveCountMax options to SSH itself. TCPKeepAlive causes TCP keepalive messages to be sent to the server, allowing SSH to detect if it can no longer contact the server. ServerAliveCountMax and ServerAliveInterval cause the SSH client to send traffic through the encrypted link to the server, and can be used both the avoid a connection being closed due to inactivity and to have the SSH client exit if traffic cannot be returned from the server for a specified amount of time.
Microsoft frees poor children from Linux struggles
Microsoft has announced an agreement with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) that will make Windows XP available on the non-profit's low-cost laptops for third-world children. Thank goodness third world children will no longer have to struggle to learn Linux, one tongue-in-cheek commentator observes.
My Asus Eee PC's Linux Journey
After months of tinkering with my Asus Eee PC, I decided on eeeXbuntu (Ubuntu with XCFE). Here's a recap of my journey so far, and where I might be heading next -- potentially with Ubuntu.
Cyber Snipa Sonar 5.1 USB Headset
BIOSLEVEL.com looks at one of the latest USB 5.1 headsets in both Windows and Linux. Are the latest round of gaming headsets ready for Linux usage?
Little thin client runs Linux
The Italian firm CompuMaster has introduced a compact thin client that runs Linux. The "Praim Ino" can be mounted on the back of a monitor, draws just six Watts, and comes with a variety of client software, the company says.
Content Protection madness on Vista
I’m a firm believer in the idea that if you pay for hardware, you should be able to make full use of it. However, DRM and content protection mechanisms are increasingly making this difficult for people.
Please Welcome Digistan
With the OOXML debacle behind us, one might ask, "Now what?" Clearly, something (or somethings) need to be done in order to be sure that the process that gave us OOXML does not repeat itself. One answer is "Digistan." Here's what it's all about.
Linux and the tax office: never the twain shall meet
Australian citizens who use GNU/Linux in their businesses should be asking exactly that question of their tax authority. (However, I doubt that anyone will do so - apart from one person who has been asking the question for at least three years). It's a tale that runs over nearly three years. Australian businesses have to periodically submit activity statements to the Australian Taxation Office and most businesses use the online method. The tax office provides a client for its electronic commerce interface (ECI) which allows businesses to file activity statements over the internet. Clients exist only for Windows and the Apple Macintosh.
Installing mod_geoip for Lighttpd On Debian Etch
This guide explains how to set up mod_geoip with lighttpd on a Debian Etch system. mod_geoip looks up the IP address of the client end user. This allows you to redirect or block users based on their country. You can also use this technology for your OpenX (formerly known as OpenAds or phpAdsNew) ad server to allow geo targeting. I will show two ways to build mod_geoip - the first way is to build a new lighttpd .deb package (including mod_geoip) which is the way I recommend. This works only if you have installed the standard Debian Etch lighttpd package. If you have compiled lighttpd yourself, then the second way is for you: it shows how to build mod_geoip.so for your lighttpd version.
Querying a database using open source voice control software
Though the tools for voice control and dictation in the open source world lag far behind those in the commercial arena, I decided to see how far I could get in querying a database by voice and having the computer respond verbally. Using a number of open source tools, I'm happy to report success.
Essential commands for Linux network administration
In this article, Mark Rais shares a list of those essential networking commands every beginning Linux administrator needs to know.
Security Researcher to release Cisco rootkit at EUSecWest
According to good friend Robert McMillan of IDG News, Sebastian Muniz, a researcher with Core Security Technologies, has developed malicious rootkit software for Cisco’s routers, which he will release on May 22 at the EuSecWest conference in London.
Removing the Big Kernel Lock
"As some of the latency junkies on lkml already know, commit 8e3e076 in v2.6.26-rc2 removed the preemptible BKL feature and made the Big Kernel Lock a spinlock and thus turned it into non-preemptible code again. This commit returned the BKL code to the 2.6.7 state of affairs in essence," began Ingo Molnar. He noted that this had a very negative effect on the real time kernel efforts, adding that Linux creator Linus Torvalds indicated the only acceptable way forward was to completely remove the BKL.
OLPC: one virile Windows laptop per child
The news that Windows XP will be made available on the One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop is now official. When the project began, a move such as this would have been dismissed out of hand by any of those involved. What has changed to make the OLPC just another seller of Windows laptops?
Give Me 3 Synths, Part 2
In this second installment I'll profile Minicomputer, a subtractive synthesizer with some familiar aspects, unique characteristics, and terrific sounds. Let's take a look under its hood and see what makes the Minicomputer run.
Fixing Debian OpenSSL
Debian, the popular Linux distribution, has just been shown to have made an all-time stupid security goof-up. They managed to change OpenSSL in their distribution so that it had no security to speak of. Good job guys! OpenSSL makes it possible to use SSL (Secure Socket Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) in Linux, Unix, Windows and many other operating systems. It also incorporates a general purpose cryptography library. OpenSSL is used not only in operating systems, but in numerous vital applications such as security for Apache Web servers and security appliances from companies like Check Point and Cisco. Yeah, in other words, if you do anything requiring network security on Linux, chances are good, OpenSSL is being called in to help.
Announcing SugarLabs
Sugar Labs Foundation is being established to further extend Sugar, the highly acclaimed open source “learn learning” software platform that was originally developed for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) XO laptop. Sugar is the core of the XO laptop's human-computer interface; it provides a fun, easy-to-use, social experience that promotes sharing and learning. Sugar Labs will focus on providing a software ecosystem that enhances learning on the XO laptop as well as other laptops distributed by other companies, such as the ASUS Eee PC. Consistent with the OLPC mission to provide opportunities for learning, an independent Sugar Labs Foundation can deliver learning software to other hardware vendors and, consequently, reach more children.
Discussing free software syncronicity
There’s been a flurry of discussion around the idea of syncronicity in free software projects. I’d like to write up a more comprehensive view, but I’m in Prague prepping for FOSSCamp and the Ubuntu Developer Summit (can’t wait to see everyone again!) so I’ll just contribute a few thoughts and responses to some of the commentary I’ve seen so far.
Adobe releases Adobe Flash Player 10 beta for Linux
Adobe Systems is reaching out for Linux desktop users with its announcement today that the first beta of Adobe Flash Player 10, a.k.a. Astro, is now available for Linux, as well as Windows and Mac OS X. In a statement, David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president of the Platform Business Unit at Adobe, said that "Adobe had been working closely with the community; we are delivering groundbreaking creative features that will be transformative for interactive designers and developers, and revolutionary for end users."
Can Icahn bring Microsoft’s Yahoo bid back?
Updated: Billionaire investor Carl Icahn announced an alternate board of directors for Yahoo in a move that could revive a Microsoft bid. Will Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer bite?
10 Must-Have Firefox Extensions
Plugins and extensions—they're what made Photoshop such a bonanza from the late 1980s onward, and they gave it the market push to triumph over competitors who preferred to keep their tools and development completely in-house. It was a great idea—make your own product more valuable by letting other people enhance it for their own benefit—and it worked famously. In the graphics world, everyone's got 'em now. But, in the browsing world...well, it takes an open-source project to apply that kind of functionality across categories.
Tutorial: Become A System Rescue Guru With Linux, Part 1
One of Carla Schroder's favorite Linux features is its endless adaptability as a cross-platform rescue tool, and her favorite rescue Linux of all is the excellent Gentoo-based SystemRescueCD. In this series, you'll learn how to set things right when things on your PC go awry.
LTSP 5 - Making Thin Clients Phat
Last year, I wrote about our school district's implementation of LTSP. In the article, I pointed out the significant limitations a thin client environment gives you. While I don't think my article was the reason the issues were addressed, less than a year later just about every limitation I highlighted has been eradicated. Welcome LTSP 5.
I've finally got my home Debian Lenny installation where I want it
It's been a year and a half since I started using Linux (or GNU/Linux, if you prefer) for much of my day-to-day computing, but the past week or so marks the first time I've had to support another user -- in this case my wife, Ilene, whose Macintosh iBook G4 is awaiting the end of the semester at California State University Northridge, where she teaches. ... It has been a lot harder than I thought. We don't think like our users. But we need to learn.
Building a glossier front end for MythTV
Josh Stewart loves MythTV -- so much so that he is building his own front-end app for it as a drop-in replacement for MythTV's default. The replacement is called Gloss, and although it isn't ready for prime time yet (no pun intended), its OpenGL effects and GStreamer bindings show plenty of promise. One of MythTV's distinctions among digital video recorder (DVR) applications is that the front end (through which you watch television and recordings) and the back end (which runs the scheduling database and records video to disk) are separate apps -- and multiple front ends can connect to the same back end independently.
Ubuntu 8.04 KVM Benchmarks
Back in January of 2007 we had looked at Linux Virtualization Performance as we had compared a running native OS (at that time, Fedora Core 6) against the same operating system running as a virtualized guest OS using Xen, QEMU with the (once closed-source) kqemu kernel module, and then KVM. In this testing we had found that KVM had performed well and won a number of the tests, but it wasn't the clear winner nor it had won by a substantial margin. However, the Kernel-based Virtual Machine had premiered with the Linux 2.6.20 kernel and it has matured quite a bit over the past year and a half since its christening. With that said, we are in the process of conducting new Linux virtualization benchmarks to see how these various implementations compare today.
Linux wins big in financial trading
Red Hat announced that a European branch of the the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) has implemented its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Red Hat Network. NYSE Euronext is using RHEL for key components of its "mission-critical," high-speed financial trading environments, Red Hat said.
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