Robby Pedrica's Tech Blog

Author: Robby Pedrica

  • BPOS down – again

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Considering last month’s outage, one would have thought the okes at Microsoft would have beefed up the BPOS service offering but it’s not to be. There were problems logging into Exchange and SharePoint Online yesterday morning for about 3 hours. This outage, apparently caused by network hardware issues, mostly affected North America and British customers.…

  • Mweb strikes again

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Most people will know that I dislike Mweb’s services and support. A lot! My experience with them over the years has shown a company that lacks any reasonable level of technical skill to solve client issues, and their support manner leaves a lot to be desired. Couple this with an uncapped ( non-business ) solution…

  • Aussie web host/registrar hacked

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Security and data integrity/safety are 2 of my pet loves; and pet hates when people don’t take notice of them. Notwithstanding the fact that you host your precious data with someone who you think is responsible, you need to take responsibility yourself. If something happens to your data and you’re left out in the cold,…

  • Cloud services fail – again

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    Robby Pedrica
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    I seem to spend a lot of time blogging about cloud services and I think you all know by now I’m not a big fan. So when they fail, I like to gloat. Like I’m gloating at Microsoft right now. Their BPOS system has been slowly failing over the last few weeks and finally gave…

  • Sony OE suffers another hack

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Wow! It seems that Sony just can’t get a break. Sony Online Entertainment has announced that hackers may have obtained personal customer information from SOE systems which includes name, address (city, state, zip, country), email address, gender, birthdate, phone number, login name and hashed password. They also indicated that a number of credit cards from…

  • Slackware 13.37: an interview

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    Robby Pedrica
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    I woke up this morning to find a very nice email in my inbox – Slackware 13.37 has been released! So continuing on from previous articles in my interview series, it’s time to take a look at Slackware 13.37. One thing is for sure about the development process – Pat has been having some fun.…

  • Sony’s PSN hacked

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    As you may have gauged from other posts, Sony has never endured themselves to me. Their recent activity in suing George Hotz for hacking the Playstation  3 ( after they removed the OtherOS function ) means I’m even less enamoured with them. But the final nail may have just been struck: the Playstation Network has…

  • Apple i* devices track your movements

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    Robby Pedrica
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    It’s no secret I’ve never been a big Apple fan, although not for the reasons you may think. It’s not because of their draconian and closed environment. Neither is it because their products have little technical merit above other products yet seem to garner an almost fanatical following. Primarily it’s because of Apple’s poor security,…

  • When Harry met Sally … 2

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    Robby Pedrica
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    This is not the type of thing I normally post but Funny or Die have a great skit of Billy Crystal and Hellen Mirren going on … take a look. billy_crystal

  • Linux: 20 years and growing stronger every day

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    Robby Pedrica
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    The Linux Foundation is celebrating 20 years of Linus Torvalds’ epic creation, the Linux kernel. What started out as a simple hobby has grown into possibly the biggest ( and most disruptive ) phenomenon in computing history, powering commercial business, most of the internet, supercomputing, stock exchanges, a myriad of electronic appliances, entertainment systems and…

  • Windows 7 SP1 breaking machines

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Since the release of SP1 for Win 7 and Server 2008 R2, there have quite a lot of issues relating to the installation of the service pack. Apparently many are seeing boot failures after the installation of the service pack, specifically with C00000034 fatal errors. Of course, those with WSUS will be getting automatic upgrades…

  • RSA hacked

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    Robby Pedrica
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    RSA has long been an industry stalwart when it comes to security tokens and 2-factor authentication ( SecurID ). One would normally trust them implicitly … but that trust is no longer a given since their lack of disclosure surrounding a recent attack on their systems and possible data theft. SecureID is one of the…

  • IE9 just released, still has old unpatched bug

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    Robby Pedrica
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    The vulnerability could allow an attacker to cause a victim to run malicious scripts when visiting various Web sites, resulting in information disclosure. This impact is similar to server-side cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Even Google has released a statement regarding targeted attacks on IE users. Apparently this MHTML vulnerability has been around for 7 years.…

  • Senate Passes Landmark Patent Reform Bill. Or does it?

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Apparently the US Senate passed a new bill regarding patent reform yesterday, leading to legislation that will overhaul the US Patent & Trademark Office. Included is a change from first-to-invent to first-to-file, an end to fee diversion which will help the USPTO fund its current systems properly and assist with the backlog of 70000+ applications.…

  • The BSA – FUD, FUD, FUD

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    Robby Pedrica
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    It’s well known that the BSA has been an industry mouthpiece and lapdog for commercial software vendors since its inception in the 90’s. However, the level of FUD ( fear uncertainty and doubt ) that now pervades it’s press releases and comments threatens to dispatch any remaining sense of respect for the BSA, to the…