Robby Pedrica's Tech Blog

Category: Computer Tech

  • Code/Software quality

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    Robby Pedrica
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    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

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    Robby Pedrica
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    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

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    Robby Pedrica
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    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…

  • MS virtualisation and Vista compat mode for XP

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    Robby Pedrica
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    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

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    Robby Pedrica
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    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?

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    Robby Pedrica
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    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…

  • Great Wall of Aussie

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    The government-led project to block all sites deemed as inappropriate to children has continued with a number of interesting developments in the last few weeks. First Wikileaks listed the blocked site list on their website ( and were then duly blocked themselves!!! ). Now a group have hacked the Aus Classification Board’s website. For a…

  • IE8 – not really all that

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    IE8 was released to much fanfare recently ( Dean Hachamovitch at the Las Vegas MIX 09 conference ), but it hasn’t taken long for someone to find the first vulnerability. Nils, a hacker from Germany, banged the browser by using a previously unknown vulnerability in the browser, during the annual PWN2OWN contest held at the…

  • Windows security redux

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    Robby Pedrica
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    A number of people responded to my previous article on the BBC’s botnet indicating that I was being overly harsh. I have 2 comments on that: 1. if you’re happy fighting fires, then maybe you should be a fireman 2. most of these respondents ran standalone machines; they had no experience maintaining corporate networks And…

  • The BBC’s botnet

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    Robby Pedrica
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    It appears that the BBC has decided to become a hacking company – they recently obtained a botnet of around 22000 machines from an underground forum and demonstrated ( as part of a  special investigation ) how to use these machines to send spam to some predefined email addresses they had created. UK law (…

  • KDE 4 continues to mature

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Much has been said, both negative and positive, about KDE 4 since it’s introduction almost 2 years ago now. Yes it was a rocky start but that was to be expected on a project this large. But the developers kept their cool and stuck to their vision. It’s interesting to still see some negative comments…

  • Truecrypt and ext2ifs

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    Robby Pedrica
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    I came across an issue this morning ( which has been around for some time already ) concerning using TrueCrypt and ext2ifs together. I would get a blue screen of death in Win XP sp2 when trying to mount a Truecrypt volume and the BSOD would relate to a driver called ifsmount.sys. Some googling turned…

  • Mono, Suse and Microsoft – problems all around

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Microsoft’s recent patent suit against a prominent printer manufacturer ( that happens to use open source software in some of its products ) has raised more than a few eyebrows. This is the first execution of Microsoft’s threat against FOSS since its announcement over a year ago, when it indicated that FOSS was in violation…

  • Czech ISP chaos

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    Robby Pedrica
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    A Czech ISP made some changes this morning which cause routing updates to increase from a few thousand per second to around 25k per second at its peak. Newly-connected BGP routers typically provide information about themselves to each and every other BGP router on the internet.  One of these pieces of  information is AS (…

  • Windows for War – scary stuff

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    Robby Pedrica
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    A number of military organisations around the world have started using Windows 2000 as a platform for operational systems within navies, the army, air services and other war branches. But recently there has been quite a bit of consternation concerning the use Windows in UK naval vessels as well as French fighter planes. I’m the…