µ-cloud, so far...

Sporting as a: VM-lab / Workstation / A/V-rig / Gaming-rig / VM-production :P

3 years - 24/7 operation (2011-2014), and still running like a well-greased steam-engine :P everything runs some form of Linux ;) open standards - open systems :D all the way.

I've never had OP processing-capabilities before, especially at my own complete personal disposal (20+ years of computing-experience), until now :P 3,5 years later (that's including half a year of planning before starting the build).

Never going out of CPU-time, practically never overflowing (swapping) the system memory. And rarely even getting into CPU-loops (unless I'm doing some risky low-level programming for lulz).

I am proud to say that my domain is fully OSS-operated ;) :D

---

Network-wise, I have separated internal traffic into separate VLANs, mainly for layer-2 separation of different protocols and various traffic-types, like: Internet-traffic, incoming web-server traffic, VPS' Internet-traffic, management sub-net and iSCSI sub-net.

iSCSI even runs on separate NICs (on both storage-box and server), through it's own switch-block and separated sub-net, to prevent interference with other packets running on high-traffic sub-nets (like Internet-access).

Outgoing traffic (and incoming of course :P) is pumped through a VPN / Firewall network-box that has a firewall-throughput equal the total speed of the FTTH Internet-uplink connection ;D

---

h3x4c0m-build: http://blog.pizslacker.org/2011/12/h3x4c0m.html

Teknologisk åpenhet

"Teknologi miljøer som baserer seg på åpen kildekode skiller seg ut. Det er kanskje ikke så rart heller. Med åpen kildekode er det er nærmest kun fantasien som begrenser hva man kan oppnå.Utgangspunktet er, og har alltid vært, teknologisk åpenhet. Denne åpenheten er det ikke alle som liker."

--Eivind Jonassen, Telekompetanse

Ja. Utdraget sier vel egentlig alt jeg, rent personlig, har opplevd i forbindelse med åpen teknologi innenfor bedrifter de siste årene.

Det samme kan ikke sies om det siste firmaet jeg jobbet for (ikke-navngitt flyverksted). Der måtte de benytte åpen teknologi i deler av virksomheten fordi proprietær teknologi ikke hadde tilsvarende gode nok systemer på bruksområdet. Åpen teknologi ble ikke sett ned på ifm. proprietær teknologi, men da kompetansen på åpen teknologi her var ganske laber, ble det ofte til at jeg ordnet det som måtte ordnes på disse systemene.

I bedrifter/selskaper der åpen teknologi MÅ benyttes, er det rett og slett mangelen på kompetansen ifm. slike systemer som gjør at de ikke blir promotert slik de kanskje burde bli, og da spesielt høyere oppe i økosystemene i disse bedriftene/selskapene.

Hadde F/OSS blitt like bra anbefalt av senior-kollegaer såvel som (oss) ny-utdannede. Hadde nok de fleste bedrifter gått over til nyere og bedre systemer.

Vi trenger teknologisk åpnehet for innovasjonens skyld. Og i et land som Norge er dette mer enn mulig. Det finnes flere norske selskaper som har laget sin egen markedsnisje basert på åpen teknologi. Men det meste av denne innovasjonen legges best merke til i utenlandske teknologi-samfunn, dessverre.

Nå ser det heldigvis ut som om myndigheter og lokale styrer ser mer og mer på åpen teknologi, men dette må også styrkes av at vi med den rette kompetansen hyler ut, argumenterer positivt for bruken og andre eventuelle bruksområder.

Vi må fortelle de rette folkene om alle fordelene, bruken, sikkerheten og fremfor alt; åpenheten.

http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article264691.ece

Whoah! :o

I bet no-one ever imagined Microsoft would do a 360 like this on code-licensing.

For once.., Microsoft has given in to public pressure about one of their products(!). FINALLY!

They admitted their app "Windows 7 DVD/USB Download Tool" contained code from the CodePlex-project "ImageMaster", they even decided to comply with the GPLv2 by releasing the code-additions on CodePlex(!).

Thing is, they (MS) contracted a third-party vendor to deliver the app, but with shared responsibility for code revisal, which THEY (MS) took full responsibility for (admitting the added CodePlex-code was overlooked in the process).

The official word from Microsoft:

When it comes to our attention that a Microsoft component contains third party code, our aim is to be respectful of the terms under which that code is being shared. As a result, we will be making the source code as well as binaries for this tool available next week under the terms of the General Public License v2 ... and are also taking measures to apply what we have learned from this experience for future code reviews we perform.

Link:

http://blogs.computerworld.com/

Norwegian link:

http://www.hardware.no/

40 years of Multics

Multics, the ancestral system that coined the computer-term 'time-sharing' and heavily influenced the development of today's computer systems. The catalyst for Unix and later similar POSIX-like systems.

Multics was never really widely used, like Unix, and thus never got the public recognition like Unix and Linux did, mainly because it was a hardcore research/educational system (much like Plan9 from Bell Labs) and the fact that the Internet was not yet conceived (to spread the code, like Linux-communities does today).

Multics was developed in the 60s by computer science professors at M.I.T.

It was the first --OFFICIAL-- system to incorporate the concepts of time-sharing (of which the ITS was the pioneer) and high-level programming. It's main programming language --PL/I, "Programming Language One"-- was intended for non-assembly-savvy developers, and was as such, the first high-level programming language ever used(!).

In accordance with other university-policies in later years, the Multics-project released Multics codebase as open-source in November of 2007. This spurred the creation of the online "Multicians" project (link at bottom of post), who's members where eager Multics users that wanted to elaborate and collaborate on their favourite system online (much like Linux has since 1992-3).

Link:

http://www.cio.com.au/

http://web.mit.edu/multics-history/

http://www.multicians.org/

The Go Programming Language

Google har hendene i så mye morsomt for tiden. Det virker jo bare som om de vokser og vokser, og har heller ikke lest mange artikler om at Google har permittert ansatte etter finanskrisen heller.

Nå har de gått enda et steg videre etter lanseringen av Android. Nå utvikler de et høy-nivå programmeringsspråk kalt "Go".

Go skal kombinere hastigheten til høy-nivå språk som Python, kombinert med ytelsen og sikkerheten til lav-nivå språk som C og C++. Språket er hovedsaklig et eksperiment som skal være gøy å leke med.

Men alt Google har laget de siste årene tilsier at det kan ligge andre tanker bak også.

Linken under går til en lengre introduksjonsvideo laget av Google.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKnDgT73v8s

Oppdatering fredag 13. november:

Fant nettopp ut at Google-teamet bak Go har fått med seg Ken Thompson(!) og Rob Pike(!), ikke rart språket har fått mye media-omtale.

Ken Thompson laget på 60/70-tallet systemimplementering-språket "C" og var med på å utvikle Unix i dette språket sammen med Dennis Ritchie.

Rob Pike var i samme Unix-gruppe hos Bell Labs (teleselskapet AT&Ts utviklingsfirma), hvor han var med på utviklingen av Plan9 sammen med Ken Thompson og var sentral i utviklingen av usecase-konsepter og applikasjoner for Unix. Rob er også forfatteren til det universelle tegnformatet UTF-8.

Oppdatering mandag 16. november:

Enda bedre! Språket er kun tilgjengelig for Linux og Mac OS X :P Ser ut som de satser fokusen på hardcore-utviklere ved å kun tilby implementasjoner for POSIX-systemer.

Link:

http://www.hardware.no/

http://www.digi.no/

http://en.wikipedia.org/

http://golang.org/

A brief little UNIX history video

WARNING: HIGH GEEK-/NERD-/TECH-FACTOR!

Well, if you're a *nix-geek like myself, this is very interesting stuff ^^,

As the creators of UNIX themselves portray, UNIX was in fact created with these points in mind:

• Simplify computing (yes, computing was MUCH more complex before UNIX arrived).
• Inspire computing communities / collaboration / sharing.

Do these points remind you of any ongoing projects related to OS development online, huh? (You should be leaning against the open-source movement and the Linux-kernel.)

Linux was created because Linus Torvalds found it frustrating that he couldn't run a similar POSIX-compliant system on his x86-based PC at home while studying at Helsinki - Finland. At his Uni, he used the Solaris-system (Sun's UNIX implementation) on SPARC-machines (Sun workstations). And since Solaris was proprietary and business-/academic-/scientific-oriented, it was also quite expensive.

So, Linux was in fact created because it was needed by it's author.

Similarly, UNIX was the brainchild of two computer scientists in the 60s, because it was NEEDED.

Allthough they had different reasons for needing the systems in mind, they were both created because of necessity.

Galaxy Game

Galaxy Game was one of the first coin-operated game-machines around (now known primarily as arcade-games).

It was developed by a Stanford University grad named Bill Pitts and his highschool friend Hugh Tuck. They based the game on Spacewar!, which was developed in 1961 for the PDP-1 and later ported to a variety of other platforms, while Galaxy Game was developed on a PDP-11/20 with a vector display.

I read an article about the game featured on Google Blog, which then inspired me to write about it since I'm quite fond of antique computer games and/or programs.

If you want to know more about this inspiring game, read this article from the infolab@Stanford.

On a side-note: arcade-games have evolved exponentially over the years since the 1970's. Arcade-games in the 70's were mostly nothing more than flat computer-programs designed to entertain people.

To give an example, most games in that era were simple (not as in "non-complex" though) 2d graphical interactive computer applications, like "PacMan" or "Galaga" (allthough Galaga didn't appear until the beginning of the 80's, it still resembled games from the 70's), while as arcade-games in our day and age are usually *NOT* simple and *NOT* 2d-based. But rather, they are powered by complex 3D computations, complex audio modulation and some even contain libraries to emulate physical environments to appear more realistic to the gamers. To achieve this realism, arcade-vendors now have to design and implement accelerated hardware into their arcade-game machines, which, given the current economic status of the world, is quite an expense.

I basically foresee that the arcade-market is going to slow down the coming years, which is kind of sad in my opinion. Arcade-games have been the gaming industry's testpads for upcoming game-features since the late 80's. But since we now have the Internet, there is no longer a strong demand for physical gaming machines.

Instead we have emulators, virtual machines and high bandwidth for which to connect the core-software to the game-data online, or locally. The possibilities are endless.

Norsk kryptolog

Vi har våre egne bidragsytere innen datateknikk / informatikk i Norge, bl.a. Ernst S. Selmer (født 11. februar 1920, død 8. november 2006), matematikk professor som står bak algoritmen som brukes til å beregne kontrollsiffrene i våre norske fødselsnummer.

Nysatsingen på åpen kildekode

Da ser det ut som det blir Bergensområdet som først får benyttet alle de vidunderlige åpne kildekode-prosjektene som finnes rundt om i verden, i et offentlig samarbeid "for åpne standarder i offentlig sektor" (som ble nevnt tidligere i en-eller-annen artikkel/offentlig dokumentasjon).

Nytt kraftsenter på åpen kildekode - digi.no : Bedriftsteknologi

Bergen kommune, it-ekspertene Avenir, Høgskolen i Bergen (HiB), Universitetet i Bergen (UiB) og lokale it-miljøer går sammen for å gjøre Bergen til et kraftsenter for utnyttelse av åpen kildekode i utviklingen av fremtidens it-løsninger.

Initiativet understøtter både Regjeringens satsing på økt bruk av fri programvare og ønsket om styrket samhandling mellom offentlig og privat sektor.

Gartner spår at innen 2012 vil 80 prosent av alle it-løsninger inneholde elementer av åpen kildekode. De fastslår at virksomheter som velger å ignorere denne utviklingen, automatisk vil stille seg to skritt bak konkurrerende virksomheter.

Bergen Kommune, Avenir, HiB, UiB, og store lokale it-miljøer som DnB Nor, NextGenTel og EDB Business Partner ønsker å ligge i forkant i utnyttelsen av åpen kildekode.

"GhostNet" linked to the "Waledac" botnet

Conficker.C-infected computers have shown activity recently, according to security analysts and software/network engineers, so it seems the threat is not over...yet.

It's main activities (identified activities, that is), are:

• downloading (malware from other botnets, mainly the spammer-botnet "Waledac", better known as the re-animated Storm DeadNet "Valentines e-mail spammer botnet")
• linking (assumably to other malicious botnets)
  
• communicating (assumably with it's creators).

It is also reported to flash rogue anti-viral software ads directed at users of these infected machines.

Darknet.co.uk had this article to explain (excerpt from article below):

“Fear is used, universally, as a means to control people,” said Sendio CTO Tal Golan. “Governments use it. Large businesses use it. So it should come as no surprise to anyone that ‘cyber-bad guys’ use it.”

At the moment, the rogue anti-virus software comes from sites located in the Ukraine (131-3.elaninet.com.78.26.179.107) although the worm is downloading it from other sites, according to Kaspersky Lab.

Hmm. No, not surprising at all if you ask me.

IBM kjøper teknologien som berget Apple

IBM kjøper teknologien som berget Apple - digi.no : Bedriftsteknologi

Det var Transitive-teknologi – kalt «QuickTransit» – som berget Apple da all Mac-programvare skulle overføres fra PowerPC-prosessoren til Intel-prosessorer.

Hmm, voldsomt så IBM kjøper opp for tiden? Vel, at IBM henvender seg til Apple av alle firmaer er jo noe ekstraordinært i seg selv (eller?).

Uansett, at IBM nå tar til seg kryssplattform-verktøy for å konvertere Linux/x86 kode, til Linux/PowerPC betyr i alle fall at de nå har muligheten til å oppskalere brukte plattformer/arkitekturer (bruke større dataanlegg, flere hard-prosesserende maskiner og/eller forskjellige/større systemer/anlegg, alt etter applikasjonshensiktene/brukerlasten i gjeldende firma) siden de nå kan kjøre samme kode overalt.

The "Big Blue Sun" ?

Well, the news about IBM and Sun Microsystems merging has slipped my attention.

But now that I'm aware, what will this mean to future Java / JavaScript development? Personally, I think(hope) that IBM will continue the open-source development and release of Java code.

JavaScript is basically public-domain, but changes aggressively every month/business-quarter. It is governed by the ECMA initiative (hence, is often referred to as "ECMAscript"
 in web-development communities).

http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-04-2009/jw-04-if-ibm-owns-java.html

Another article I found @ computerworld.com insisted IBM would commit to hold Java development under the supervision of the community, maybe under a revised community development group?

Anyway, as IBM has been a great contributor to OSS communities the last years (in contrast to Sun), I expect them to better handle Sun's main development products, or if not, their own Java implementation(s) (Apache Geronimo / Jakarta) will suffice (if not even exceed the optimal performance of Sun's implementation(s).., at least according to some web-developers/journalists and/or Java enthusiasts).

Computerworld.com link:
http://blogs.computerworld.com/good_bye_solaris_the_fate_of_suns_top_5_technologies

Flash memory

After getting my new Asus Eee 900 PC, I was curious to research flash memory, to see the current state of events surrounding this technology.

Among a few of my notations, I learned that non-volatile memory, is memory that can retain it's information even when power is cut. [ Thus SSDs (Solid State Drives) are non-volatile, because they are supposed to replace the now obsolete magnetic-disk storage format. ]

Another interesting fact about solid state memory, memory chips and programmable memory chips, is the little known fact about how they originated.., or, why they were developed in the first place.

What I found didn't really shock me at all. Like with everything else technology-related, the U.S. Air Force had it's cold, damp hands in the mix.

PROMs (Programmable Read Only Memory chips) were developed at American Bosch Arma Corporation in Garden City, New York as a request from the United States Air Force to serve as a flexible and more reliable way of storing targeting constants (ballistic targeting vectors / calculations) in ICBMs (or, InterContinental Ballistic Missiles).

PROMs are defined as "non-volatile permanent storage devices", as they are programmed after creation, by shorting fuses in the chip to state binary digit programming [1(on) or 0(off)]. Or, to be blunt: PROMs usually contain machine-level instruction-sets to execute pre-defined tasks.

But as with a lot of technology, permanent storage is not a preferred every day method for the average Joe. So, later years were dedicated to develop dynamic flash memory.

In modern flash memory, the chips should be/are able to re-write/delete data up to several times without any significant drops in performance.

API / ABI / POSIX

API => Application Programming Interface

An application programming interface (API) is a set of routines, data structures, object classes and/or protocols provided by libraries and/or operating system services in order to support the building of applications.

The API itself is largely abstract in that it specifies an interface and controls the behavior of the objects specified in that interface. The software that provides the functionality described by an API is said to be an implementation of the API. An API is typically defined in terms of the programming language used to build an application. The related term, ABI (Application Binary Interface), is a lower level definition concerning details at the Assembly language level. For example, the Linux Standard Base is an ABI, while POSIX is an API.

POSIX => Portable Operating System Interface

The POSIX standard defines an API that allows a wide range of common computing functions to be written such that they may operate on many different systems (Mac OS X and various BSDs implement this interface); however, making use of this requires re-compilation for each platform.

011000100110100101101110011000010111001001111001 ("binary")

" There are _10_ different kinds of people in the world.
Those who understand binary.., and those who don't "

^_^

My job...

Yes, I will now try to explain exactly what I do for a living ;) but first, a little prologue about myself.

I first started doing paid work with computers when I volunteered for a community-job at a local youth-club where I lived at the time I'm referring to. Where I did everything from administrating websites, doing webdesign, handling the networking, webserver tweaking, email server maintenance, etc. I had this job for a full year until I got sick of it. Being an operator isn't as glamourus as it may/may not seem.

Then I worked 6 months for a major Scandinavian ISP company as a service desk consultant; answering troubleshooting questions, logging faults, reading for the CCNA exam (which I never finished, due to lack of interest), and a lot of other cool stuff that heightened my professional skill levels.

Now, I do what I set out to be doing, when I was still in Junior High, I make: web designs, web templates, web applications (php & asp), administer Microsoft Servers (not my kind of bag, but I gotta make a livin').

What this means in 'g33k':
I work with programs that provide interoperability in support of the move to coherent distributed architectures.

What this means in somewhat plain (computer-)English:
I work with programs that make business-trading more efficient by supporting enterprise application integration, which simplifies the exchange of information between enterprise software for the buyer, and the supplier. This is achieved by relying on non-architecture specific languages and tools (webservers, databases, AJAX,ASP) for cross-interoperability.

I never imagined I would end up doing programming and scripting for a living, in fact, it was the last choice I would have taken a few years ago... It's even the reason I dropped out of uni'. But here I am, and that's what I'm doing...and I'm loving it! ;D

OSS participation!

A 30-page ebook on how to participate in the Open Source community; whom to talk to, where to go for info, etc. =) A recent addition to open source development, following the beta release of the brilliant testing program 'AppChecker'.

http://ldn.linuxfoundation.org/

Application checker

AppCheck is a testing-application for programs made for linux to check for cross-system portability. AppCheck tests the ELFs, scripts, libraries and more. As a testing framework, it doesn't seem to differentiate itself much from the forerunner of all checking programs: lint. The first program to flag suspicious and non-portable contructs, first appeared in System V Unix version 7 (outside of Bell Labs) in 1979.

But it's what AppCheck does after these checks that makes it stand out. It checks all the components of the program against the Linux Standard Base, AND different distributions listed in the LSB Database. It then displays all of this information on a webpage to make the report more intuitive and structured, and even gives you the opportunity to submit the program directly from the test-program for LSB certification!

After reading about this wonderful piece of software, I was inspired to do more C/C++ programming in my spare time, since AppCheck will spare me a lot of time when it comes to testing.

AppCheck is in no way a perfect checker, it's still in beta, and it cannot check libraries, binaries, and other components that aren't listed in the LSB. But it is a significant step forward for portability development.

** Note however that AppCheck is in no way a debugger **

http://www.linux.com/feature/144170

OpenSSH

OpenSSH er en derivat av den originale "free ssh 1.2.12" utgivelsen fra Tatu Ylönen. Denne versjonen var den siste som var "fri" nok for gjenbruk i OpenSSH-prosjektet. Deler av OpenSSH bærer fremdeles Tatus lisens som var inkludert i hans egen utgivelse. Denne versjonen, og alle tidligere, brukte matematiske funksjoner fra "libgmp" biblioteket. Biblioteket var også inkludert med disse tidlige ssh versjonene. Libgmp er gjort tilgjengelig under (LGPL) Lesser GNU Public License, selv om versjoner av lisensen på denne tiden lignet mer på standard (GPL) GNU Public License.

En kombinert lisens for alle delene er tilgjengelig på http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/usr.bin/ssh/LICENCE.

Snart etter 1.2.12 utgivelsen fra Tatu, ville nyere utgivelser by på mer restriktive lisenser, selv om libgmp fremdeles var inkludert og nødvendig for å bruke programvaren. Tidligere restriktive lisenser nektet folk å lage en Windows eller DOS versjon. Senere lisenser avgrenset bruken av ssh i kommersielle miljøer, hvor de i stedet krevde at firmaer kjøpte en dyr versjon fra Datafellows.

Tidlig i 1999, gjenoppdaget Björn Grönvall denne bestemte utgivelsen og startet å fikse bugs. Hans versjon av ssh er kalt OSSH og hadde bare støtte for SSH 1.3 protokollen. Rykter sier at OSSH har blitt integrert i noen kommersielle produkter i Sverige. Og til og med den dag i dag, har ikke OSSH støtte for SSH 2 protokollen.

OpenBSD prosjekt medlemmer ble klar over Björns arbeid mindre enn 2 måneder før utgivelsen av OpenBSD 2.6 release. De ville inkludere støtte for ssh protokollen i 2.6 utgivelsen av OpenBSD, men de måtte bli sikre på at den var perfekt. Derfor bestemte de seg for å 'forke' fra OSSH utgivelsen, og strebe etter rask utvikling på samme måte som den originale sikkerhetsrevisjonsprosessen ble utført internt i OpenBSD prosjektet. Som et resultat, var mye av kildekoden i utgivelses-filene allerede på RCS revision 1.34, noen helt oppe i 1.66. Utvikling gikk veldig raskt siden de hadde en deadline å komme i møte.

AMD's Linux support leap

AMD have really shown their dedication towards open source software the last couple of years. As explained in the Phoronix-article below this post, AMD has fostered not only one, but two open source driver projects with technical specifications, programming guides and register information for their graphics cards. They have even started shipping their cards with Tux printed on the retail boxes and Linux drivers included on the driver-cd's! Finally, a gfx-card manufacturer that has truly started leaning towards open development.

Personally, I've been using ATi/AMD's proprietary drivers for well over 2 years now. Cannot say I've always had positive experiences with them, but they usually worked without involving too much system hacking and modification. Actually, my experience with problems related to their drivers, were caused by internal driver functions rather than conflicts with system settings/libraries and/or software.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_evolution&num=1