Var jo bare et tidsspørsmål...

"IT-eksperter går til nettverkskrig"

http://www.digi.no/php/art.php?id=802214

"Klart for 'offisielle' ID-kort"

'Er vi villig til å betale 340 kroner for et kort som skal hjelpe det offentlige til mindre tap og mer effektive tjenester?'

http://www.digi.no/php/art.php?id=802334

011000100110100101101110011000010111001001111001 ("binary")

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

^_^

Slackware-Current

Allright.
First off, this is my server/multimedia-top/desktop machine. I've been running Slackware Linux on it since revision bump 10.0. Lately I was running a heavily modified v12.1, with a custom HIDS and firewall automation solution. But with all my modifications/addons to the GUI, it was slowing down... massively. I was also experiencing kernel oops concerning OpenGL on quite a few applications as well.

Then again, the machine sports the following specs:
AMD Athlon 1.8GHz, 1.1GB RAM, nVidia GeForce 6600 GT 128MB AGP8x

To put it bluntly; I was getting tired, So I decided to upgrade it all to the ever-feared slackware-current branch. Which, in my opinion wasn't that hard a task at all. I just rsynced the current-directory on a close mirror, read the 'UPGRADE.TXT', and went along with the upgrade procedure.

I am now sitting and writing this post on my newly fresh installed Slackware-Current environment ( codenamed '12.2 RC1', it even has the '12.2' insignia in some configuration files in the /etc directory already ). Anyway, the screenshot is of my low-contrast themed KDE-4.1 desktop running Plasma desktop effects, and the background is called 'vanilla standard slackware-logo', an svg-file I made a while ago.

"An idiot's view of open source"

blogs.bomputerworld.com skrev:

"...Keen, forfatteren av boken, 'Cult of the Amateur: How the Internet is killing our culture', argumenterer at 'En av de veldig få positive konsekvensene av den pågående finansielle smittsomheten vil være et skarpt kulturelt skifte i vår holdning mot den økonomiske verdien av vårt arbeid. Storbredt arbeidsløshet og en dyp økonomisk nedgangsperiode inbefatter den mest effektive motgiften mot de utopiske idealene til åpen kildekode radikalene.'

Og p.g.a. dette vil 'Historikere se tilbake på åpen kildekode manien mellom 2000 og 2008 med en miks av skepsis og fornøyelse. Hvordan kunne tusenvis av folk donert bort deres kunnskaper til Wikipedia eller blogosfæren gratis? Hva var det med Internett som gjorde så mange av oss irrasjonelle om vår økonomiske verdt?'

Problemet med dette argumentet er enkelt: det er et 'strå-mann argument'. Det finnes nesten ingen åpen kildekode radikaler, og av deer det meget få (hvis noen i det hele tatt) som jobber gratis.

Hvem som helst som virkelig følger åpen kildekode utviklingen vet at majoriteten av koden som blir bidratt er skrevet av betalte profesjonelle utviklere. Som ofte påpekt tidligere i artikler på nett, er det mest populære åpen kildekode prosjektet, Linux, skrevet av industri-Amerika.

I Linux kjerne versjon 2.6.24, for eksempel, vet vi at, minst, 74.2% er skrevet av betalte utviklere. Vi kan til og med koke det ned så langt at vi kan navngi de ti øverste på utviklingslisten, i rekkefølge: Red Hat 11.2%; Novell 8.9%; IBM 8.3%; Intel 4.1%; Linux Foundation 2.6%; uavhengige linux konsulenter 2.5%; SGI 2.0%; MIPS Technology 1.6%; Oracle 1.3% og MontaVista 1.2% med Google følgende etter mot toppen av topp ti med 1.1%.

Utviklerne i disse selskapene jobber ikke gratis, og aksjeholderne deres forventer å se en sunn profitt. Nå, finnes et ideal her. Er ikke sikker på om jeg ville kalt det "Utopisk" da. Jeg ville kalt det ytterst pragmatisk og praktisk. Hovedidéen i åpen kildekode og dens noe heller radikale forgjenger 'free software' (gratis programvare), er at det er bedre å dele informasjon enn å låse det inn i proprietær mykvare (software).Eller, for å sette det i lys på en måte de fleste vil forstå, i stedenfor å prøve å spise en liten kake hel, den proprietære fremgangen, mener åpen kildekode utviklere at det er bedre å lage en større, bedre kake slik at alles stykker blir like store. Dette er ikke en form for 'pie-in-the-sky' idé. Det virker.Linux Foundation slapp nettopp en studie som viste at Linux-varianten 'Fedora Core 9' ville ha kostet, i form av konvensjonell utviklingskostnad, rett i overkant av 11.75 billioner dollars. Den kombinerte markeds-korken, i denne fiaskoen av et aksjemarked, av topp-selskapene som jobber på Linux, var rett over 400 billioner dollars denne morgenen (23/10/08). Dette høres ikke akkurat ut som Keens sultne og kalde arbeidsløse masser som gir vekk "deres intellektuelle arbeid over Internett i det spekulative håp om å få noe 'bakroms-profitt' igjen" for meg. Microsofts markeds-kork, forresten, var 198 billioner.

Linux er ikke noen form for spesial-tilfelle. Mozilla Corp., selskapet bak Firefox, har en nett-verdi på over $60 millioner per år. Det meste av dette kommer fra deres reklamepartnerskap med Google. OpenOffice er bundet til Sun og IBM. Selskapene investerer i åpen kildekode fordi det er bra for geskjeften, ikke fordi det får dem til å føle seg varme og gode. Individer kan jobbe for åpen kildekode prosjekter fordi det får dem til å føle seg bra, men det holder også et tak over hodet på dem.

Nå finnes det åpen kildekode idealister. Ta, for eksempel, vennen min og topp Samba utvikler, Jeremy Allison. Allison sluttet i Novell fordi han protesterte mot Novells partnerskap med Microsoft. Idealistisk? Ja. Latterlig idealistisk? Nei. Et par uker senere jobbet Allison for Google.

Poenget, hvis en bryr seg med å lete, er like enkelt som nesen i ansiktet ditt. Åpen kildekode er ikke bare en hvilken som helst dum idé. Det er en helt fornuftig måte å utvikle mykvare (software) og tjene penger. Hvis du tenker i andre retningen, vel, beklager, men du har egentlig ikke tatt deg tid eller giddet å virkelig tenke eller se på det 22. århundrets business realiteter.

Skrevet av: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
Oversatt av: pizslacker

Original artikkel: http://blogs.computerworld.com/an_idiots_view_of_open_source

Wow, a whole month since my last post...

I'm getting very buzy these days. Doing webdesigns, scripting content management engines, portal frameworks, automagic scripts for linux, function scripts for the webserver @ work...

And I've re-lit my passion for art! ;D Gouache-, oil- and acrylic painting, pencil sketching, etc...

I'm doing very well =] Indeed.
For the first time in my life, I'm actually able to balance my finances.., sweet!

Finally, a decent HIDS for Win32!

OSSEC has finally been aqcuired by a software-company with enough resources to boost development towards a windows-client as well as a linux-client.

I installed the win32-client on my office workstation, and it is working like a charm. Active Responses are working, I'm getting the notifications I set-up manually and the agent-manager made administration quite easy.

So I can say I'm very pleased that Canada-based software-company ThirdBrigade aqcuisitioned OSSEC HIDS as a security product. And even more so because they promised to continue with the open-source development and distribution of it under the GPL.

http://www.ossec.net/

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

DEC terminals

I was just sitting, surfing and playing around. Reading about computer equipment from the 70's and 80's. When I suddenly came across this DEC terminal, that has _the_ most unusual model name I have ever heard/seen... ;D

Ladies and gentlemen! The 1990 "DEC VT420" computer terminal! ;P

Jargon

The _original_ hacker's dictionary!
With tons of interesting definitions and puns ;)

http://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html

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

BSOD x 10

Seriously, someone should have learned by now that you can only trust Microsoft products to a certain degree when it comes to complex production environments. The computer running the lightshow in the picture above for the opening of the Beijing Olympics 2008? Well, it didn't perform quite as it should.., and then displaying a gigantic BSOD (Blue screen of death), when it wasn't even running Vista! IT WAS RUNNING XP!

Computer manufacturer Lenovo was responsible for the Olympic computers, and insisted they run Windows XP instead of Vista, which they considered to be untrustable and unstable. Yeah, like XP was the better choice, huh?

http://blogs.computerworld.com/

http://www.smh.com.au/

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.

Memory IS RAM!

Moss on Firewalls

Anti-Piracy?

Think Free

innergeek geektest

35,89744%

Richard's Dream

An open book on the subject of freedom.

The book is entitled "Free as in Freedom", and is an interesting read about the hacker who started it all; computer ethics, software freedom, freedom of choice, open standards, open sharing of computer knowledge...

 RMS (Internet alias) is both loved and hated in the open source and free software camps. He has strong beliefs, and does not compromise about his 'freedom'.

MIT AI lab hacker; Richard M. Stallmann's crusade for free software. http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/

"Unquestionably, one of the great seminal figures of the hacker culture" -- Eric Raymond, open source evangelist and author of "The Cathedral and the Bazaar"

Linux, a disruptive technology?

I really like articles focusing on the disruptive force of Open Source and Linux ;P

The unknown, emerging from nowhere, taking on the big guns. Most of the big multi-national corporations are even beginning to realize the potential and cost-effectiveness of the systems available, and also it's insanely huge userbase. So it does not seem like Linux is going to be squeezed out of the market at first, due to it's superb' portability, stability and cost-effectiveness.

(Click the post-title for the original article.)

Operating Systems & area's of use

I'm getting quite fed up about reading articles discussing and comparing GNU/Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. A lot of the people writing these articles are missing the big picture. The systems are NOT similar, they are NOT based on any same principal or guideline what-so-ever...

Now, just to mention it; yes, they ARE based off some common UI (User Interface) guidelines. Most Operating Systems dating before the 80s did not incorporate any graphical user interface.



If you have seen the TV-movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley", you know that the whole GUI-idea was a rip-off from Xerox in the early 80s. As was the mouse peripheral device. A lot of the standards we enjoy today, were at first experimental projects at big companies that weren't all that comfortable about releasing any new technology, thinking it wouldn't appeal to the computer industry which had a reputation of being very conservative since the 70s.

To clear up about these different systems:

GNU / Linux:
Was developed as a hobby project by a software engineer student from Finland; Linus Torvalds. It was never supposed to become as big as it has. This is mostly thanks to the many computer hobbyists, gamers, professors, nerds and geeks around the world that endorsed development of an Open Source Operating System. For those of us that DO understand computers enough to be able to use a POSIX-system on a regular basis, it was a matter of choice: do we want a system that tells us what we need, can have or do? *OR* do we want a system that gives us the opportunity to do whatever we want? and even gives us the ability to modify/improve any part of the system at will?

GNU/Linux is, and will still be for some time; a system for specially interested.

---

MS Windows / Mac OS (X):
Were developed as alternatives to IBM's business systems that were dominant at the time. Most computer systems at the time were very expensive "business machines". UNIX mainframes and super computers running at universities and big companies.

But in the latter part of the 70s and early 80s, Bill Gates from Microsoft, and Steve Wozniak from Apple Computers realized that normal people could benefit from owning a personal computer.

Steve began developing an affordable computer machine in his garage. While Bill Gates and fellow MS-colleague Paul Allen were buzy rolling out their founding product "Altair BASIC". When Steve Wosniak and Steve Jobs revealed their machine at a local computer convention, Bill and Allen were gobsmacked. Someone had beat them to the punch. After setting up a meeting with Apple Computers, they *borrowed* the GUI and peripheral device technology, and basically did what a lot of people accuse GNU/Linux communities of doing now; copying the user interface and input technology that had landed Apple on the map.

---

Both companies were basically trying to do the same thing; bring a business-only solution to the consumer masses. Only, they stepped on each others toes in the process. Not to mention quite a lot of commercial sabotage and espionage.

Today though, the companies have different goals. And Microsoft owns quite a large part of Apple.

Apple changed their focus from being just a personal computer manufacturer, to become something of a cult icon instead. Bringing the movie, music and image industries together to worship the Apple Macintosh as the de-facto standard for audio/visual compositioning and editing.

Microsoft on the other hand paved along with their same goal of putting personal computers in the hands of the common man. Succeeding in having almost 90% of all computers running a MS product to this very day.

To quote a software engineering friend:

"Most of the average users I know would rather buy a new PC than upgrade Windows"

This says a lot about how normal computer users want to get their hands dirty with software handling. Most people get others to do it for them, or they do as quoted above. How things work, and how they should be set up, are not appealing to most non-tech-savvy people.

So it's not a question of which is better than the other. They have different areas of expertise, and so also different areas of usage.

To quote once more from my friend:

"The average consumer just wants to be able to pop a CD into his optical drive, wait 10-15mins and have a working system."

With popular open source operating systems, this is not actually an idiot-proof option yet. You still have to know what an MBR is, what a bootloader does and have some basic knowledge about different filesystems.

You really have to pocess a fair amount of advanced computer handling knowledge to be able to install a *nix-system on your PC. Let alone getting it working without any headaches or special considerations.

There ARE user-oriented Linux distributions which simplify a lot of the administration-tasks when maintaining a Linux-box. But these are usually quite bleeding-edge compared to older (matured with rock-solid stability) distro's, and tend to be buggy and unstable.., unless, you have prior experience handling difficult Linux-boxes / POSIX-systems like I have ;P

P.S.:
*nix = general acronym for POSIX-based operating systems (UNIX,Linux,BSD,Solaris).

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

Acer Aspire One

I have made my choice. I chose the Acer Aspire One.

Specs:

• CPU: Intel Atom N270 (1.6GHz, 533MHz FSB, 512 KB L2 Cache).
• Memory: 512MB DDR2 533MHz on-board (Upgradable to 1GB or 1.5GB using 512MB or 1GB soDIMM).
• Display: 8.9" WSVGA (1,024 x 600), LED Backlit, 180 cd/m2.
• Storage: 8GB NAND Flash Module (Linux Versions) & 80GB 2.5in HDD (Windows XP Versions), Memory Card Reader (SD, MMC, RS-MMC, MS, MS PRO, xD).
• Audio: Integrated Intel HD Audio, Integrated Microphone & Speakers
• Communication: 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, 10/100 Fast Ethernet, Integrated 3.6MB 3G/HSDPA (Optional), WiMAX (Optional), 0.3 Megapixel WebCam.
• Dimensions: 249 x 170 x 29mm (WxDxH) for NAND Flash and 3-cell battery version; 249 x 195 x 36mm for HDD version with 6-cell battery.
• Weight: 995g for NAND Flash, 3-cell battery versions; 1.26kg for HDD/6-cell versions.
• Battery: 2200mAh 3-cell battery (3 hours life); 2600mAh 6-cell (7 hours life) - figures derived from NAND Flash editions.
• Warranty: 1 Year Carry-in, upgradeable to 2 Years.

Ordered June 20., Confirmed delivery date: 01.07.2008.

Est.delivery change #1: 09.07.2008.

Est.delivery change #2: 25.07.2008.

Est.delivery change #3: 01.08.2008.

Cancelled order @ retailer, re-ordered @ another retailer June 27., Confirmed delivery date: 09.07.2008.

Est.delivery change #1: 02.08.2008.

Est.delivery change #2: 29.07.2008.

01.08.2008 10:30am - IT HAS ARRIVED! ;p w00h00!

Friday quote

"Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything"--- William of Ockham (1285-1349)

Quotes galore ;P

“Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done.“

-- Linus Torvalds (creator of the Linux kernel)