dawgiestyle

02/26/05: Why You Should Dump Internet Explorer

Looks like I have a bit of a theme going today. It is unintentional, but I hope it serves to strengthen the message. Dump Internet Explorer now!

This article makes some very good points that every IE user should read.

02/26/05: Firefox dusted down with security upgrade

I actually found this article after I posted the last one, so I'm not merely trying to boost my post count, though this does help.

The update addresses a recent security flaw involving download dialogue boxes and a code injection vulnerability as well as a number of other bugs listed here. The Mozilla Foundation has also changed the way its browser renders international characters in domain names in order to guard against possible phishing risks.

Keep the updates coming :)

02/26/05: Mozilla Battens the Hatches Against IE 7.0

This is exactly what the browser market needed. Competition. Well, hang on a second...what I mean is this is exactly what Microsoft needs to improve their products. Mozilla, I believe, will strive for a safe, secure, and superior browser no matter what the competition.

In an interview with eWEEK.com, Mozilla director of engineering Chris Hoffman said the Foundation plans to add another staffer to join Dan Veditz, a long-time Mozilla contributor and ex-Netscape employee who now serves as lead engineer for security.

The bottom line is this is good news all around. Personally, I wouldn't care about people using IE if it didn't cause all the problems it does. It isn't my concern if somebody wants to use an inferior product, but when it starts affecting me indirectly, I have a real problem with it.

02/19/05: Suse 9.2, Cdrecord, and Cdrdao Weirdness

Maybe somebody can help me understand what's going on here. I've been googling like a madman to no avail. Here is the problem I was having: I use K3b to burn CDs. Now, the problem I was pulling my hair out over was that burning bin/cue images would always force the burner to go into burnfree mode at speeds over 24x, where iso images could burn at my burner's full 40x. Note that K3b was using Cdrecord for both types.

After some googling, I found that the 2.6.8 kernel had some problems involving burning, so I installed a vanilla 2.6.10 kernel and tried it out. I also found some obscure tip to add hdc=ide-cd to my grub file, so I did that as well.

Surprisingly, burning worked great, but what I noticed was that K3b was now using cdrdao for the bin/cue image and was having absolutely no problem burning at 40x.

Here's where it starts to get weird. I changed back to the 2.6.8 kernel so I could find out which change worked. Still K3b was using cdrdao for bin/cue and working great. So I removed hdc=ide-cd from the grub file, and still it used cdrdao!

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with the change, but I can't handle not understanding something like this. If anyone has seen any similar behavior, please let me know about it, and any solutions that worked for you.

02/16/05: An open letter to people who write open letters

Remember that letter to Bill Gates about interoperability? There were some genuinely good points made in it, but here's a guy who has a major beef with open letters, and I can see where he's coming from.

The "open letter" format was an attention-grabber the first few times it was used. The first few online petitions were novelties, too. But now both of these devices have played out their usefulness. They have become as trite as football announcers using the phrase, "shy of a first down," which was an elegant turn of phrase the first few times it was used but is now used -- overused -- during every televised game.

Take a look at the rest here. The guy is hard to argue with.

I can't say I won't continue to find good points in open letters, but yes, I would much rather read those points in a well-written commentary piece.

02/14/05: Opera to MS: Get real about interoperability, Mr Gates

Here is a great letter from the Chief Technology Officer of Opera Software to Bill Gates on the issue of interoperability.

You say you believe in interoperability. Why does the Hotmail service deny Opera access to the same scripts as Microsoft's own browser? As a result, Opera users can't delete junk mail.

The letter gives many more examples, along with some suggestions for Microsoft to get them on the right track. Check it out.

02/13/05: Microsoft Plots Fixes to IE Browser

It seems Microsoft is feeling the pressure from Firefox.

Microsoft Corp. recently held a secret Webcast with some of its closest partners to discuss ways in which the company might improve its Internet Explorer browser and customer confidence in the platform.

As far as I'm concerned, they've already lost. When the only motivation for improvement is loss of market share, you're playing a losing strategy. On top of this, IE can only be fixed superficially without having to modify the entire operating system; so most likely, it will not be "fixed" until the release of longhorn sometime between 2006 and 2020. And even then, who would actually believe that all its problems have been solved? Sure, improving the browser is possible (there is definitely room for improvement), but improving customer confidence is quite a different matter. First, make it stop installing every piece of spyware that asks to be installed, then you can start thinking about improving customer confidence. Good luck with that! *snicker*

02/12/05: Google Offers to Host Wikipedia

The Google folks have been busy lately. It seems like I am hearing about a new Google project every other day. The latest news is their offering to host Wikipedia, free and with no strings attached.

Although exact terms of Google's offer have not be publicly disclosed, Wiki Media's board of directors is considering a deal and plans to meet with Google in March. The foundation did say that Google will not insert its text based advertising on Wikipedia.

This could be great for Wikipedia, which is having a hard time sustaining its growth. At the same time though, there is something in the back of my mind that is making me at least a little bit uneasy about Google's explosion of activity. Who knows? It isn't unheard of for companies to do something out of the goodness of their hearts.

02/08/05: Linux Kernel Security is Lacking

Jason Miller wrote on Security Focus that Linux Kernel Security is Lacking.

While I don't necessarily disagree with him, I could tell from the very beginning that this was a BSD user. Not that BSD users are bad, but for some reason, whenever anybody speaks negatively about linux security, it turns out to be not Microsoft, but a BSD user. So naturally I was a little tickled when I saw this.

Although personally I'm a huge follower of BSD-based operating systems, I keep an open and analytical mind when looking at any OS.

Hey, I love BSD too, and I do also believe that the BSDs have a better security model, which is why I have a FreeBSD fileserver, OpenBSD router, and Suse Linux desktop.

And really, Jason may be on to something here.

For the BSD-based operating systems, the point of contact can be found in a few seconds by searching for the word "security" on the official web site of the associated operating system. ... As for Linux, however, one could search through several web sites such as linux.org and kernel.org, sites associated with the Linux kernel, and find nothing whatsoever related to a security contact. Even our good friend Google will lead us nowhere fast.

I can't decide if this is a fair complaint. The biggest difference between Linux and the BSDs here is Linux is just a kernel that is built into many distributions, and the BSDs are distributions in and of themselves. For many users, the instinctive place to look for security updates is the distribution's website. Of course, getting the updates is not Jason's issue. The distributions all seem to stay on top of things in this regard, upgrading their distribution's kernel quickly. The problem is not having a definitive method of reporting security issues. I have never thought of this point since I am not a programmer, or anything near what it takes to be a kernel hacker.

Ok, I think I am leaning toward agreeing with the guy. He raises a good point, and it will be interesting to see if and how the kernel developers handle it.

02/06/05: Cygwin: Changing the Face of Windows

This article is a nice introduction to Cygwin for anyone who isn't already familiar with it.

Cygwin is a dynamic link library (DLL) that acts as a Linux API emulation layer. Included with the Cygwin suite are most of the common Linux command-line tools and quite a few graphical applications, giving you the look and feel of a Linux machine on top of your MS Windows box.

Sometimes, when working on a windows server, I find myself crippled by dos when writing batch files. Most notably, copy and xcopy seem to hold me back the most. Neither command will copy a directory along with all files in the directory, and subdirectories. It was when I had to schedule a simple backup of a directory full of files and subdirectories that I realized this limitation, and looked to cygwin. With it, I could write a bash script to copy the entire directory, and I could schedule the script to run in the native windows task scheduler. A very simple thing, but it sure did save me some headaches.

Definitely a handy tool for any sysadmin's kit. I'm not even 100% sure that this could not have been done with dos commands, but the fact that I am more comfortable with unix and that it was readily available made it a non-issue.

The desktop issue aside, I don't think anybody can dispute the superiority of the unix command line.

02/06/05: MySQL Ups and Downs

I'm going to roll these two stories into one as eweek should have done.

Analysis Finds MySQL Code Low on Bugs has good news about MySQL's bugs:lines-of-code ratio, while MySQL Criticized in Wake of MySpooler Worm suggests a secure by default stance should be taken.

I actually agree with both. We cannot give open source software a break when it comes to security. If we let things slide, then quality will slide.

I believe MySQL AB will make this change. Security flaws, afterall, whether they result from bad coding or merely bad policy, are a stigma you do not want associated with your product.

Coverity Inc., the company that performed the code analysis on MySQL, seemed to be more impressed at the speed in which the bugs they did find were fixed.

"We gave them the results about two weeks ago," Hallem said. "They had them all addressed in two days. It was a very fast turnaround."

I am impressed by Coverity's report, but coding is not MySQL's weakness. It is trusting people to secure themselves. It is not a lot to ask, but too much to expect.

02/03/05: Problem Installing Horde/Imp On FreeBSD 5.3

I've just had the most frustrating problem trying to install imp on my home server. I ran my "make install" command in the ports tree, and here's what happened after a few minutes.

checking for magic files in default path... not found configure: error: Please reinstall the libmagic distribution ===> Script "configure" failed unexpectedly. Please report the problem to ale@FreeBSD.org [maintainer] and attach the "/usr/ports/sysutils/pecl-fileinfo/work/Fileinfo-0.2/config.log" including the output of the failure of your make command. Also, it might be a good idea to provide an overview of all packages installed on your system (e.g. an `ls /var/db/pkg`). *** Error code 1

I finally found the solution at freebsdforums.org, which consists of a single command:

cp /usr/src/contrib/file/magic.h /usr/include/

I wanted to help ensure that anybody else running into this problem finds the answer quickly.

02/01/05: Google Targets Internet Domains

I first read this news yesterday at nethub.org, and now today at eweek. Google has taken the first step towards selling domain names.

Google on Friday officially became a registrar after completing a contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit body that oversees the Domain Name System, ICANN officials confirmed.

Oddly, they apparently do not plan on offering domain registration services. Not right away, at least.

"Google has become a domain name registrar to learn more about the Internet's domain name system," a Google spokesperson said in a statement. "While we have no plans to register domains at this time, we believe this information can help us increase the quality of our search results."

To me, Google seem to be posturing themselves to be a complete one-stop shop. Not the kind with the crappy no-name products either. With Blogger and Gmail already in their bag of tricks, they obviously don't plan on slowing down anytime soon. Here's to hoping they keep it real.