Robby Pedrica's Tech Blog

Author: Robby Pedrica

  • Medical Security and Open Source

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Earlier this year, I read and listened ( through the linux.conf.au podcast ) to what can only be described as a seminal and thought provoking paper on medical software security by Karen Sandler, opening my eyes to an entire area of software security that one doesn’t normally think about. Karen’s talk at the 2012 Linux…

  • Slackware 14.0: An Interview

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    Wow, Slackware 14.0 is finally here! To say this has been a huge upgrade cycle is putting it mildly. Nearly a year and a half I think? And 5 release candidates. That’s not of course to say there’s anything wrong with that – 13.37 has been serving us just fine since April last year. A…

  • A little hackathon

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    I recently decided to move my Joomla installation from v1.5 to 2.5, a not-inconsiderable task considering that there is no direct upgrade from 1.5. It took some time to get the Jupgrade free tool working but finally I got all my content moved across. Of course, 1.5 templates are not compatible and so started a…

  • Email delivery ( and some other stuff about email )

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    Email is still the single most used communications tool on the internet and will probably remain so for some time to come. We send in the region of 300 Billion emails per day and for the most part, everything just works. On the face of it, email is simple: compose, address and send. But behind…

  • csync CLI usage and mirall tuning

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    Robby Pedrica
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    This post provides ad collates information regarding  the client components which is not provided as yet by ownCloud. csync cli usage The ownCloud csync version uses the same syntax as the original csync but with a differing url syntax/module. 1. create a folder/repository through the web interface that you will sync to 2. choose a…

  • Apple’s got the green. Or not. Or maybe it has. Not quite sure.

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    Robby Pedrica
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    So last week, Apple decided it was leaving the EPEAT registry, a listing of ‘green’ products that meet certain conditions and are classed into 3 groups depending on the level of coverage. Apple was one of the originators of the EPEAT registry and so it was surprising that they decided to leave. A number of…

  • Who is looking at who

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Analysis of website usage is a huge part of understanding how to improve websites, how to give visitors a better surfing experience and how to maximise the time a visitor spends on a site ( potentially purchasing items while they are there ). SEO, or search engine optimisation, goes hand in hand with site analysis…

  • WSB Aragon/MotoGP Assen

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    As always, Superbikes on Sunday was fantastic. There was close racing in all classes including the premier class. In WSBK Race 1, Biaggi narrowly beat Melandri to the line. In Race 2, the roles were reversed and Melandri came home 1st, with Davies, Laverty and Biaggi hot on his heels. In SuperSport, Cluzel wiped out…

  • SA Radio getting even crazier

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    Robby Pedrica
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    The saga between NetDynamix ( the provider of streaming services to BallzVisual Radio and 2OceansVibe Radio ) and Shawn Dewberry, the author of a scathing report into possible over-inflated statistics provided by NetDynamix, has continued through the last week. MyBroadband, a leading SA online tech news site, asked Chris Grant, NetDynamix CEO, for a number…

  • SA Radio gets a little crazy this week

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Earlier this week, Shaun Deswberry released a post slating the listener/viewer statistics that had been released by NetDynamix, the company that streams the Ballz Visual Radio and 2Oceansvibe Radio online stations.He backed this up with a lot of reasonably sounding technical detail so it was surprising that NetDynamix immediately went on the offensive and said…

  • Apples can get viruses

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    After years of deceiving its clients, Apple has finally admitted that its products can get viruses, something most of us have known all along. The Mac maker changed the wording on its “Why you’ll love a Mac” page from stating “It doesn’t get PC viruses” to “It’s built to be safe”. The same page also…

  • Slackware -current May 2012

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    Robby Pedrica
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    For anyone having some weirdness in X/KDE after updating to the latest current ~ May, there are some extras you need to do. First for the latest release of Xorg, some packages have been split and as such, you will have new packages that have probably not been installed. Go through recent entries in Changelog…

  • A week of hacks

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    Robby Pedrica
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    This week has been one massive hack; 1st LinkedIn, then eHarmony and now Last.fm. What is especially galling is that none of these companies salt their stored passwords – considering that unsalted password hashes are easily deciphered with the massive computing power available to anyone these days, this is a huge faux pas. “Salting stored…

  • Moonlight kicked into touch

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    Wow, now this is a turn-around for the books – Microsoft bed-partner Miguel de Icaza saying that Moonlight development is being stopped specifically because a. Microsoft is concentrating on HTML5 and b. because Microsoft has imposed certain restrictions on Silverlight. Never thought I’d see the day … Hooray for the death of non-standard protocols and…

  • Digital rights and your personal freedom

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    “We live in a democracy. Or so they told us.” If you take a look at democracies around the world today, you’ll find governments that behave in a completely undemocratic way. One just has to look at the lengths the US has gone to, in undermining the Bill of Rights in the pursuit of terrorism…