Robby Pedrica's Tech Blog

Tag: open source

  • Slackware 14.1: an interview

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    I’ve been quite slack ( yip queue the puns ) on reviewing Slackware 14.1 but time has been short and to tell you the truth, after upgrading, there’s not a whole lot different from an existing user’s point of view ( except for that usual Slackware “it just works” air of operation ). That being…

  • Squid changes in 3.2 and 3.3

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Squid, the venerable proxy/caching server, has  recently undergone a few major changes. 3.2 SMP In 3.2, one of the biggest changes is SMP ( multi-cpu or -core ) support. This could potentially have a huge impact on the performance scalability of a machine that uses multiple CPUs or cores. Previously ( in <= 3.1 ),…

  • 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…

  • Virtualisation part 4: oVirt

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    Red Hat’s virtualisation product, RHEV, was slightly hamstrung in v2 seeing as the manager technology ( which had previously been purchased from Qumranet ) only ran on Windows. This requirement is something that has put me off that product until now – RHEV 3 has been released with a JBoss-based management server now and a…

  • Windows 8 a KDE clone?

    Windows 8 a KDE clone?

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Microsoft has always been accused of following the pack rather than innovating. So it’s no surprise that early screenshots of the Windows 8 copy dialogue seem to be a direct rip-off of the KDE 4 copy dialogue, from the ‘multiple copy operations in single dialogue’ visual aspect:   to the bandwidth usage graphs:   The…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • Poor reporting from BCS/ITnow

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    I recently bumped into an article written by Steve Smith, MD of IT Security firm Pentura. After reading only the 1st paragraph, I already came to the conclusion that either Mr. Smith is clueless or purposely disseminating falsehoods about OSS security. The rest of the article is an abomination peppered with inaccuracies and complete rubbish.…

  • The Slackware 13.1 Interview

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Slackware releases are like a big shiny new birthday present for me ( in fact mine’s just around the corner, hint hint ) even though I follow -current mostly. It means that the distro is at a point where new packages have been added, others upgraded and bugs worked out. And Patrick, and the rest…

  • VP8 vs H264

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Apparently the MPEG-LA forum, which manages a pool of patents relating to H.264, thinks that any implementation of video will be encompassed by one or more patents from its patent pool. Not only does this reek of megalomania, but it also shows just how far gone the US patent system had gone down hill. It…

  • Slackware64 Multilib and GSB

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    Robby Pedrica
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    I’ve had a few queries on setting up Slackware64 Multilib as well as GSB with -current. It’s not difficult at all but just requires one to follow a strict set of steps. Multilib Eric Hameleers ( Alien ) has the definite write-up on Multilib on his site however I’ll provide a short synopsis here for…

  • Slackware 13.1 rc 1 available

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    Robby Pedrica
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    Upgrade to kernel 2.6.33.4, gcc 4.4.4 and glibc  2.11.1. JDK 6u20 in extra and usblp back in cups

  • What is Linux? and software confusion …

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    Robby Pedrica
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    A recent posting on the Blog of Helios prompted me to write a short and simple definition of Linux that might be useful for current non-users of this operating system. It is however a difficult definition in the context of what people already know. And the fact of the matter is that what the general…

  • Novell wins copyright case against SCO

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    Robby Pedrica
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    It seems that SCO’s litigation engine has been running for ever ( 7 years now ) and they exist only to litigate. But it appears that a jury-led decision agreeing with Novell being the rightful copyright holders of Unix, has finally put paid to any serious action by SCO. Perhaps we can all get on…

  • DNSSEC finally on the move

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    Robby Pedrica
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    It looks like DNSSEC is breing implemented at the root level world-wide. Almost 2 years after the first country level signing ( .se for Sweden ), the K-, D- and E-root servers operated by RIPE, University of Maryland and NASA respectively, started root signing this week past. 7 of the 13 root servers now supply…