Robby Pedrica's Tech Blog

Author: Robby Pedrica

  • WorldWideWorx, Arthur Goldstuck and new cables

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    The talk given by Arthur Goldstuck this evening at Bandwidth Barn was very enlightening. Entitled ‘the cables are coming’, it concentrated on the new undersea cables that are due to be going on line in the next few years, the effect they will have on the internet in SA and the internet trends in SA…

  • SBK: Donnington

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    There was mixed fortunes for all classes in this weekend’s WSBK series. The biggest news of course is Haga’s massive high side coming into Coppis in the 2nd SBK heat. It was initially thought that he had fractured T8 and 9 vertebrae but after careful inspection, these were found to be sealed and from an…

  • Ubuntu the minor player?

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    Well that’s according to Dana Blankenhorn on ZDnet … While Dana is not an anti-Linux person, his view is limited to presumably the closed US ecosystem. Meanwhile the rest of the world is speeding on and adopting FOSS at a rate of knots. Ubuntu itself ( and others ) is being used everywhere from education…

  • On a lighter note, MotoGP …

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    This past weekend’s MotoGP had some of the best racing since Stoner and Rossi’s duel at Laguna Seca last year. Lorenzo and Rossi tagged each other for most of the race until the 3rd lap to go, when Rossi made his move. From then on, there were a number of lead changes per lap until…

  • Mono where art thow?

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    The debate surrounding Mono, the ‘open source implementation of .Net’, has been going on for some years now. And a very roudy debate it has become lately. Some history first. Mono was originally conceived by Miguel de Icasa, now a Novell employee. Originally part of the Ximian project, it was later incorporated into Novell at…

  • Viruses, viruses, and more viruses

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    3 new scenarios for the weekend … I recently had to rebuild a Linux server for a large national retailer, running a console-based app, due to hardware failure. This duly done and the machine back in operation, I was surprised to get a call relating to high traffic usage on that network. As some background…

  • The IT supply ( value? ) chain in South Africa

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in ,

    Being at the end of the world, and with past issues like Apartheid, South Africa has had a different and sometimes less than optimal method for providing sales, services and support of IT equipment. The aforementioned issues have resulted in a vendor -> distributor -> reseller -> client arrangement which sometimes works well and other…

  • Freedom and copyright

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in , ,

    A statement by John Sullivan from the FSF in the US has just been posted and sheds a lot of light on the ongoing RIAA lawsuits which the RIAA themselves said they would be dropping earlier this year. What is interesting about the article is the continued view that music, art and software, and the…

  • Code/Software quality

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in ,

    Code quality and quality of software development/applications has always been a hot topic. The problem in the commercial world is that because code is closed source, you as a customer of a commercial software vendor, have no idea what the quality is of that application because you have no access to the code. Code could…

  • MS OFfice 2007 SP2 and ODF interoperability

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    I’ve waited a few days to blog on this particular issue so there would be time for those in the know to test how the new ODF format in Office 2007 SP2 works. Initial reports were that things were ( just ) ok but since then, it’s all gone downhill. One of the gurus in…

  • Linux hits 1% market share

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    This probably sounds like quite an anti-climax, but considering its 60% year on year growth, this is quite an achievement. And Windows has dropped 4% in the last year, which is a considerable dent in its market share. This together with the erosion of Internet Explorer’s browser market, indicates a general downturn for Microsoft. The…

  • WSBK and MotoGP

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    WSBK The previous weekend’s WSBK races at Assen were the usual bomb, starting with a 3-way battle up front in the premier class, race 1. Haga spent most of the race leading Spies and and fast-riding Leon Haslam until the last lap, when Spies made a last ditch effort in a very fast part of…

  • MS virtualisation and Vista compat mode for XP

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    Virtualisation comes in many forms and Microsoft has been in this market for many years already with their Terminal Services product ( application virtualisation ). More recently, Hyper-V for platform virtualisation has been unveiled as part of the Server 2008 product set and then App-V for Desktop virtualisation. MS has also just demoed their server…

  • Backups, backups and more backups

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    Why is it that when it comes to backup, most people just draw a blank? Although it can be a complex topic, surely it’s not useful to stick your head in the sand. But that seems to be the trend – until something happens and data is lost. Consider that you are responsible for your…

  • Conficker still around?

    —

    by

    Robby Pedrica
    in

    The hype surrounding Conficker just seems to be increasing and the latest variant ( C ) apparently has some interesting capabilities such as disabling security software ( AV, firewalls, etc. ), killing processes for running security apps  and p2p networking to spread infection. The worm exploits a vulnerability in the Windows Server service that is…