Robby Pedrica's Tech Blog

Author: Robby Pedrica

  • ODF and the Microsoft-sponsored SC34

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    SC34, possible right-hand Microsoft lapdog and current ISO/IEC committee responsible for OOXML, appears to be trying for a takeover of ODF as a standard. Yes, I know, it’s madness. But apparently, the fact that the whole world knows that ISO is now useless, has escaped the SC34 guys completely. They’re indicating that they would like…

  • VMWare: A “significant portion” of our technology may include open source

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    VMWare’s latest 10-q filing indicates possible large scale use of open source code. Huh? What? Excuse me? Hasn’t VMWare been telling us all along that they were GPL-compliant ( I’ve never seen any code from them ) and that they didn’t use any open source code in their products? Either they’re posturing for the financials…

  • Crackers target Windows Media encoder bug

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    It didn’t take long for exploit code to become available after last week’s Microsoft bug fix for the vulnerability in Windows Media Player. The code is distributed in 2 ways: a simple cleartext program where the shellcode has been altered and a widely deployed toolkit called e2. This causes a visitor to a web site…

  • And Chrome again

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    It appears I’m not the only one who is not impressed with Google Chrome – Jim Lynch over at ExtremeTech has written a very interesting article asking the question – why do we need Chrome at all? The answer is of course that we don’t need another browser – the current bunch do just fine.

  • Google Chrome ( again )

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    Not really wanting to give Chrome any more newstime than it’s already had, it’s nevertheless a requirement to cover the news properly. While Chrome certaily offers an interesting browser, I’m at a loss to explain the massive interest that’s been foisted on it since it’s Windows-only ( strange that releasing open-source software on a closed-source…

  • MotoGP Misano

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    For the second race in a row, Casey Stoner has bit the dust after leading the race, leaving Rossi to clean up and take 1st place. Fact is, Stoner is just pushing to hard ( or something about a scrubbed in tyre? – excuses, excuses ). The Ducati GP08 is a great bike, but at…

  • Quebec government sued over purchase of Microsoft software

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    Facil ( Quebec’s open source association ) is suing the local provincial government for purchasing Microsoft software without following government guidelines which requires government organisations to stimulate competition and look for alternatives. They indicate that Quebec has refused to look at alternative bids from open source vendors – apparently they’re spending more than $80million per…

  • EU and US coming to disagreement over open standards definition

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    The EU Commission announced on June 25 that EIF/2.0 (The European Interoperability Framework which defines the rules for software used in e-Government) will hold the line as regards patents on standards. This means that patents will not be tolerated as part of open standards ( well duh!!! ). But apparently the Americans don’t get it…

  • Breaking News!!! – CONSEGI Declaration: 6 nations say no to ISO/IEC

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    Robby Pedrica
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    The fallout from the ISO confirmation of Microsoft’s Office Open XML Specification as a standard, continues and is starting to lead to some serious consequences. The recent conference in South/Latin America focusing on free software, drew some 2000 registrants to the IT event, many of whom were top government officials. The outcome ( and declaration…

  • Debian SSH keys

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    The Debian SSH key fiasco from earlier this year is starting to bear bad fruit. The original issue ( listed earlier in this blog ) is that the Debian project took out some code from the SSH source as part of a code cleansing exercise – this code unfortunately was responsible for inserting randomness into…

  • More global internet issues – BGP

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    Some security researchers have found a vulnerability in the BGP ( Border Gateway Protocol ) routing protocol that could allow one to intercept internet traffic on a scale not possible before, except by a group such as the NSA with their Echelon project. The attack exploits a man-in-the-middle type vulnerability in BGP to monitor and…

  • The Linux Ad

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  • DNS security saved by Nominum?

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    Besides SPR ( source port randomisation ), Nominum have a number of other security options built into their Vantio DNS product: SPR defense: strange queries result in a direct connection to the server resistance: tries not to give out ip’s for name servers ( glue records ) warns ISP of attack So, interesting options from…

  • VMWare forgets about BETA code

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    VMWare developers recently left beta debug code in an update provided for ESX 3.5, with an expiry date built in. The result would be that users would lose access to their VM’s after applying the update and a ‘general system error’ would be indicated. While the updated update is now working and available, those who…

  • MSNBC.com is spammers’ latest victim

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    You may have noticed a lot of email purporting to come from MSNBC.com in the last few weeks and this is a result of a new spam campaign doing the rounds. Problem is that some of these headlines could actually be valid; even if people are intelligently looking at their email for spam, they might…