In Through The Out Door

Walt Mossberg on Vista:

The veteran WSJ tech commentator gives his verdict. He’s not terribly impressed. After months of testing Vista on multiple computers, new and old, I believe it is the best version of Windows that Microsoft has produced. However, while navigation has been improved, Vista isn’t a breakthrough in ease of use. Overall, it works pretty much the same way as Windows XP. Windows hasn’t been given nearly as radical an overhaul as Microsoft just applied to its other big product, Office.

Nearly all of the major, visible new features in Vista are already available in Apple’s operating system, called Mac OS X, which came out in 2001 and received its last major upgrade in 2005. And Apple is about to leap ahead again with a new version of OS X, called Leopard, due this spring.

There are some big downsides to this new version of Windows. To get the full benefits of Vista, especially the new look and user interface, which is called Aero, you will need a hefty new computer, or a hefty one that you purchased fairly recently. The vast majority of existing Windows PCs won’t be able to use all of Vista’s features without major hardware upgrades. They will be able to run only a stripped-down version, and even then may run very slowly.

In fact, in my tests, some elements of Vista could be maddeningly slow even on new, well-configured computers Also, despite Vista’s claimed security improvements, you will still have to run, and keep updating, security programs, which can be annoying and burdensome. Microsoft has thrown in one such program free, but you will have to buy at least one more. That means that, while Vista has eased some of the burden on users imposed by the Windows security crisis, it will still force you to spend more time managing the computer than I believe people should have to devote…

FreeNAS makes it easy to add storage to home networks:

FreeNAS is a small, powerful, full-featured implementation of FreeBSD as a network-attached storage device. (It also happens to be January’s Project of the Month at SourceForge.net.) If you’re a Linux user like me, the BSD-speak used for devices and such might give you pause, but other than that small caveat, installation and usage shouldn’t be a problem. It’s powerful enough to be used in the enterprise, but it’s friendly enough so that even a typical home office user can take advantage of it. Here’s how I created an easy-to-use NAS device for rsync backups and FTP server on my LAN.

Father of Internet Warns Against Net Neutrality:

At a recent talk at the Computer History Museum Robert Kahn, co-inventor of TCP/IP, warned against net neutrality legislation that could hinder experimentation and innovation. Calling ‘net neutrality’ a slogan, Khan also cautioned against ‘dogmatic views of network architecture.’ A video of the talk is also available.

OpenSolaris installation screencasts:

This article points to a collection of very informative screencasts which show how to backup your windows hard disk, re-partition and then install OpenSolaris on it. It also contain a synopsis of the steps needed to achieve the said goals.
Read the whole article

traceroute – a very useful troubleshooting tool:

traceroute is a tool which can be used to find out the potential bottlenecks in between your computer and a remote computer across the net. This article explains how to analyze the output of the traceroute tool to pinpoint the location which causes performance degradation on the net.

Why CIOs Should Care About Open Source:

There’s a thought provoking article by open source guru Bernard Golden over at the CIO blog web site called "Why CIOs Don’t Care About Open Source The title alone is enough to give me pause; and sometimes that’s the key to a good article.  Get people to stop and think about an issue and start a dialog.  Golden identifies some of the reasons why large companies might not see open source is strategic: it’s low dollar amount, it’s not "analyst approved" or the IT department is busy maintaining and optimizing the last generation of software rather than looking forward to the next.

While these are no doubt valid observations of many overworked CIOs, I think likely is not the case among more innovative companies.  We’ve sold a lot of MySQL to companies where the CIOs have established an open source strategy and are building out an open source stack.  In many cases, this was built from bottoms up initiatives by developers themselves who saw that open source enabled them to reduce licensing costs and apply it to headcount or newer projects.  In other companies, it’s part of a conscious strategic decision to use as much open source software as possible since it gives them better scalability and avoids platform lock-in.  The net result is that MySQL customers include companies like Cardinal Health, CNet, Garmin International, H&M, LaFarge, Sabre, Smurfit-Stone, TicketMaster, McGraw-Hill, McClatchy Interactive, NBC, Reuters, Alcatel, Cisco, Juniper Networks, Nokia, Nortel, Sprint, Vodafone, SourceFire, NetQOS, Sage Group, TellMe Networks, WebTrends and hundreds of others.

And if you look at the success of companies like Red Hat or some of the hot start ups like Al Fresco, JasperSoft, SugarCRM, or Zimbra, it’s clear that there are CIOs paying attention.  You can’t close six figure deals without the CIO or at least an IT Director having some awareness about open source. (JasperSoft and SugarCRM both put out press releases in December on their growing momentum with corporate customers.)

As with any new technology there will be companies that adopt to the technology early and some that come to the party late.  The economics of open source are staggering though and the sooner companies adopt the technology the faster they reap the rewards.  Our customers have reported saving millions of dollars in license fees.  And they are only just beginning to expand their deployments.

Golden is a smart cookie and I think he understands better than most people how open source is disrupting the traditional software license model.  Golden refers to proprietary software vendors as suffering from the "emperor’s new clothes" and being in denial that "no one wants to buy their products."  While that’s perhaps a bit of poetic license, Golden makes a compelling argument that companies like Oracle have had anemic license growth.

As Golden states in his newsletter : In a time of multi-year good economic growth, with no evidence that buyers are unwilling to spend money, it’s time to face reality: these [proprietary] vendors aren’t garnering IT budget dollars.

A much more likely explanation is that these vendors’ time has slipped into the past. IT organizations are spending, just not with them. In terms of Oracle, their big market (databases) is being undermined from below by open source databases… believe 2007 will be the year that mainstream IT organizations finally recognize that open source isn’t a fad or a harmless dalliance, but is front and center a strategic issue that must be addressed. Golden’s got a good perspective on this.  I think we will see more CIOs recognize that they can gain more control over their IT spending by looking ahead to open source technology than trying to optimize yesteryear’s systems.

So perhaps its time to start focusing on CIOs who are paying attention to open source and the ways they can reap the rewards without getting burned. Check out Bernard’s blog as well as the comments.  Perhaps readers have some other optinions on all this.  Are CIOs paying attention to open source?  Should they?  Let me know what you think…

16 Dirty Security Secrets:

If you’ve ever been involved in the difficult, demanding and often thankless task of Security Consulting, you will almost certainly have heard one or more of these statements before. Numbers 15 and 16 are my personal favourites.

What is Transport Layer Security protocol?:

TLS is a successor to Secure Sockets Layer protocol. TLS provides secure communications on the Internet for such things as e-mail, Internet faxing, and other data transfers. There are slight differences between SSL 3.0 and TLS 1.0, but the protocol remains substantially the same. It is good idea to keep in mind that TLS resides on the Application Layer of the OSI model. This will save you a lot of frustrations while debugging and troubleshooting encryption problems related to TLS.

Six Rootkit Detectors To Protect Your PC:

“InformationWeek has a review of 6 rootkit detectors.This issue became big last year when Sony released some music CDs which came with a rootkit that silently burrowed into PCs. This review looks at how you can block rootkits and protect your machine using F-Secure Backlight, IceSword, RKDetector, RootkitBuster, RootkitRevealer, and Rookit Unhooker.”

Sun to Add GPLv3 to OpenSolaris?:

Sources inside Sun Microsystems claim that OpenSolaris may see the GPLv3 added to its list of licenses soon. From the article: “While Sun officials would not confirm the plan to dual-license OpenSolaris under the CDDL and GPLv3, Tom Goguen, vice president of Solaris software at Sun, told eWEEK that other open-source technologies will play a big role in Solaris going forward. ‘Take the GNU Userland, which is an interesting piece of technology that Sun is looking at closely, and we may do something similar with, say, a container flavor,’ he said. ‘You can also expect to see a renewed focus on the needs of developers and system administrators with Solaris going forward, while individual pieces of the next version will also likely be increasingly delivered first as components or technologies targeted at vertical markets,’ he said.”

Sun Is Giving Away Solaris 10 DVDs:

“For a limited time only, just like Ubuntu’s ShipIt service, Sun Microsystems lets you order Solaris 10 absolutely free of charge. The operating system comes on a single DVD supporting both the x86 and SPARC versions. Also included is Sun Studio 11.”

GPS and Bluetooth to soon come on one microchip:

With space becoming an all-important thing in any cellphone these days, Bluetooth chipmaker CSR will soon introduce a single chip Bluetooth and GPS solution.

This is good news for wireless handset makers, who need to get as many functions on chips these days to save space for…well, nothing.

With handsets becoming so small and so slim these days, the space saved by eliminating chips from a cellphone probably won’t be replaced by anything — except less weight.=http://www.thewirelessreport.com/2007/01/17/gps-and-bluetooth-to-soon-come-on-one-microchip/“

DRM; It’s Not Really About Piracy:

“Hollywood privately admits that DRM is not really about piracy. From the article: ‘In a nutshell: DRM’s sole purpose is to maximize revenues by minimizing your rights so that they can sell them back to you… Like all lies, there comes a point when the gig is up; the ruse is busted. For the movie studios, it’s the moment they have to admit that it’s not the piracy that worries them, but business models which don’t squeeze every last cent out of customers.’ You can take action on Digital Restrictions Management at DefectiveByDesign of the Free Software Foundation, Digital Freedom, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.”

802.11n Inches Closer – Final draft approval this week?:

Glenn Fleishman proclaims that the 802.11 Working Group is expected to approve a draft sometime this week that should go on to be the final 802.11n standard, barring negotiation meltdown. Final approval is still a ways away, with voting expected this Spring, and final spec products released later this year. Of course most of the vendors who have released pre-cert 802.11n gear promise their gear will be fully firmware upgradeable; we’ll see.

Fun with FUSE:

By Kumar Appaiah

Taking the plunge into open source:

More and more, enterprise software makers are finding the open-source model offers them a better shot at growth.

I really like OS-X especially since CLI is available.

I just feel the need to explain why I will not buy these new Apple products:

1) Apple iPhone:

A) SIM Locked/Contract Required. This reason only is good enough to say “NOT” to iPhone.

B) Should be a 3G phone (UMTS) with HSPDA capabilities

C) Not enough memory. 4 or 8 Gig? Steve must be kidding.

2) Apple TV (aka iTV)

A) DRM, DRM, DRM, one more time DRM.

B) Just an extension of the iTunes Music store.

C) No support for OTA, Cable, or Satellite feeds.

D) Only supports 720p. Steve Jobs have you heard of 1080i?

But, when I do get my tax refund I will possibly consider upgrading my PB for a MBP, see Steve you will still be able to add to your millions before the SEC goes after them.

Inside the iPhone — 3G, ARM, OS X, 3rd Partyware:

“After heading off the top ten myths of the iPhone, Daniel Eran of RoughlyDrafted has written a series of articles looking ‘Inside the iPhone,’ exploring (1) why Apple didn’t target faster 3G networks, (2) a substantiated look at how the iPhone is indeed running OS X (contrary to reports that it isn’t), and (3) what it means to users and developers, and how ARM is involved, in Mac OS X, ARM, and iPod OS X, and why the supposedly ‘closed’ system Apple describes for the iPhone won’t preclude third party development.”

Beware the Apple iPhone iHandcuffs:

“Randall Stross makes a fresh and surprisingly accurate review of one of the biggest ”features“ in the upcoming iPhone and the iPod in general, ‘fairplay’. Stross writes, ‘If ”crippleware“ seems an unduly harsh description, it balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. Apple officially calls its own standard ”FairPlay,“ but fair it is not…. You are always going to have to buy Apple stuff. Forever and ever.’ Can mainstream media coverage help the battle over DRM or will this warning, like those of the past, continue to go unnoticed?”

Make Wget cater to your needs:

Most Linux users are familiar with using GNU Wget to download single files by passing the URL as an argument to the wget command, but you can also use Wget with desktop applications. It requires a little preparation, but it’s easy to integrate Wget with your favorite browser and other desktop applications. You can also use Wget in scripts to categorize batch downloads and make them fault-tolerant. Here’s how to get Wget to sit up and beg for you.