Enter the number of headlines per site:

Slashdot (Last Update: 2012-02-23 03:06:00GMT)
  • FCC Chair Calls On ISPs To Adopt New Security Measures
    • alphadogg writes "U.S. Internet service providers should take new steps to protect subscribers against cyber attacks, including notifying customers when their computers are compromised, the chairman of the FCC said Wednesday. Julius Genachowski called on ISPs to notify subscribers whose computers are infected with malware and tied to a botnet and to develop a code of conduct to combat botnets. Genachowski also called on ISPs to adopt secure routing standards to protect against Internet Protocol hijacking and to implement DNSSEC, a suite of security tools for the Internet's Domain Name System."

      Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Biologists Debunk the "Rotting Y Chromosome" Theory
    • An anonymous reader writes "Biologists have previously predicted that that the male sex-determining Y chromosome, which once carried around 800 genes, like the X, has lost hundreds of them over the past 300 million years, will mutate itself out of existence, leading to the eventual extinction of men. However, researchers of a study published in the latest issue of Nature found evidence to suggest that the Y chromosome will not shed anymore of the 19 ancestral genes that it is left with."

      Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • NRC Releases Audio of Fukushima Disaster
    • mdsolar writes "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission today released transcripts and audio recordings made at the NRC Operations Center during last year's meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Japan. The release of these audio recordings comes at the request of the public radio program 'BURN: An Energy Journal,' and its host Alex Chadwick. The recordings show the inside workings of the U.S. government's highest level efforts to understand and deal with the unfolding nuclear crisis as the reactors meltdown. In the course of a week, the NRC is repeatedly alarmed that the situation may turn even more catastrophic. The NRC emergency staff discusses what to do — and what the consequences may be — as it learns that reactor containment safeguards are failing, and that spent fuel pools are boiling away their cooling water, and in one case perhaps catching fire."

      Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • LinkedIn Buys Rapportive
    • redletterdave writes "Business networking site LinkedIn acquired Rapportive on Wednesday, which is a Gmail add-on that provides information about your social contacts as you e-mail them. The deal was reportedly already in place by Dec. 8, but Rapportive confirmed the acquisition on Wednesday in its company blog. Rapportive, which is still available over Gmail, adds an e-mailer's social networking accounts, including their Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, and overlays the information over open messages and e-mail drafts. Neither Rapportive nor LinkedIn would release the financial details of the acquisition, but sources close to the situation say the deal closed in the 'low teens' of millions of dollars."

      Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Microsoft's Anti-Google Video Campaign
    • eldavojohn writes "As the presidential race heats up, the smear ads on TV are also increasing. But Microsoft isn't going to site idly by and let the politicians engage in all that song and dance — and Microsoft really does employ both song and dance. Their Youtube channel appears to be slowly transforming from trade show videos and launches into a marketing attack or propaganda campaign that only targets Google (both videos I've watched seemed to have nothing positive about Microsoft in them). Under a month ago, they launched a spoof called GMail man, a creepy guy that flips through all your GMail and serves up super personal ads that are wrong (although they never say if Hotmail engages in targeted marketing). And a few days ago Googlighting shows up to spread fear and uncertainty about Google Docs. Most amusing to this viewer was that I found no such trace of 'Googlighting' on Bing's video service."

      Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Ask Slashdot: Best Practices For Maintaining IT Policy In K-12 Public Education?
    • First time accepted submitter El Fantasmo writes "I work in public education, K-12, for a small, economically shaky, low performing school district. What are some good or effective tactics for getting budget controllers to stop bypassing the IT boss/department? We sometimes we end up with LOW end MS Win 7 Home laptops, that basically can't get on our network (internet only) or be managed. The purchaser refuses to return them for proper setups. Unfortunately, IT is currently under the 'asst. superintendent of curriculum and instruction,' who has no useful understanding of maintaining and acquiring IT resources and lets others make poor IT purchasing decisions, by bypassing the IT department, and dips into IT funds when their pet project budgets run low. How can this be reversed when you get commands like 'make it work' and the budget is effectively $0?"

      Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Faulty Cable To Blame For Superluminal Neutrino Results
    • smolloy writes "It would appear that the hotly debated faster-than-light neutrino observation at CERN is the result of a fault in the connection between a GPS unit and a computer. This connection was used to correct for time delays in the neutrino flight, and after fixing the correction the researchers have found that the time discrepancy appears to have vanished."

      Read more of this story at Slashdot.

  • Book Review: Liars and Outliers
    • First time accepted submitter benrothke writes "It is said that the song Wipe Out launched a generation of drummers. In the world of information security, the classic Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C by Bruce Schneier may have been the book that launched a generation of new cryptographers. Schneier's latest work of art is Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust that Society Needs to Thrive. For those that are looking for a follow-up to Applied Cryptography, this it is not. In fact, it is hard to classify this as an information security title and in fact the book is marked for the current affairs/sociology section. Whatever section this book ultimately falls in, the reader will find that Schneier is one of the most original thinkers around." Keep reading for the rest of Ben's review.

      Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Phoronix (Last Update: 2012-02-22 20:11:42GMT)
  • DragonFlyBSD 3.0 Released With Multi-Core Boosts
    • DragonflyBSD 3.0 was released today with major performance improvements for multi-core systems thanks to the recent VM SMP work, plus file-system performance improvements for HAMMER, and many other changes...


  • A Pleasant Surprise In Mesa 8.1 Radeon Gallium3D
    • When running some tests on the latest Mesa 8.1-devel Gallium3D code-base for the "R600" Radeon Gallium3D driver, I was surprised by some of the results...


  • FlightGear 2.6 Rotates With Many Changes
    • FlightGear, a leading open-source flight simulator, has hit a major milestone with the release this week of FlightGear 2.6 and the many improvements it brings to free software flying...


  • Mac OS X 10.8 vs. Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Performance
    • Regardless of whether you're an Apple fan or not, by now you've likely heard the information about Mac OS X 10.8 "Mountain Lion" that began making its rounds on the Internet since last week. But how's the performance of Mac OS X 10.8 and how will it compare to the competition on the Linux side, namely Ubuntu 12.04 LTS? In this article are our first benchmarks of the developer preview release of Mac OS X 10.8 compared to Mac OS X 10.7.3 and then Ubuntu 11.10 plus the latest Ubuntu 12.04 LTS development snapshot.


  • Adobe Announces Plans To Abandon Flash On Linux
    • Adobe has issued a statement this morning that they will effectively be abandoning Flash Player support on Linux. After Flash Player 11.2 they will no longer be providing updates for Linux users but just maintaining the 11.2 release. Google is expected to take over with a Flash Player implementation based upon a new API, but only for Google Chrome-based web-browsers...


  • Flashrom Update Handles Flashing More Hardware
    • Flashrom, the open-source update to flash your motherboard BIOS and can also modify other flash ROM chips like graphics card BIOSes, has hit version 0.9.5. With this latest release there's greater hardware support and other new capabilities...


  • Mageia 2 Reaches Beta State
    • Mageia, the popular community fork to Mandriva, is now up to beta on version two of their Linux operating system...


  • Image Quality Comparison: Nouveau Gallium3D vs. NVIDIA
    • Last week I posted an image quality comparison of the Radeon Gallium3D driver versus AMD's Catalyst Linux driver to highlight some visual differences between the open and closed-source Radeon graphics drivers. Now here's a look between the Nouveau Gallium3D driver and NVIDIA's proprietary Linux graphics driver...


Undeadly.org (Last Update: 2012-02-21 14:09:10GMT)
Groklaw (Last Update: 2012-02-22 14:05:00GMT)
  • Oracle v. Google - No Real Progress on the Issue of Patent Marking
    • The parties have now filed their joint statement on patent marking (721 [PDF;Text]), but it is hard to say they are any closer than before or that this entire exercise has substantially streamlined the issue of patent marking for trial. That's the pessimistic view. The optimistic view is that they at least agreed upon a series of conditional stipulations, i.e., if Android is found to infringe, then the specified Oracle products also practice the patent an required marking. Perhaps that is the best they can do. In any case, there are clearly differences that remain as to how the claims are to be read and applied, and those issues will only get resolved at trial.
  • Oracle v. Google - Understanding the Copyright Issue with API Specifications
    • One of the central themes in Oracle's copyright claims is that Google copied Oracle's (Sun's) design specifications for application interfaces (APIs) for Java Mobile Edition. Specifically, Oracle proposes the following question to be answered by the jury with respect to its copyright infringement claims:

      Has Oracle proven by a preponderance of the evidence (i.e., "more likely than not") that Google infringed Oracle's copyrights in the Java software platform by (1) copying elements of the 37 Java API design specifications into Android software or documentation, (2) creating derivative works within Android based on the 37 Java API design specifications, and/or (3) copying elements of the 12 Java software code files into Android?

      - Document 531, Appendix A [PDF; Text]

      The thing that has always bothered me about this claim and which has always bothered me about Sun's (now Oracle's) licensing practices around Java specifications is whether they have overreached. That is, is Oracle extending the reach of its copyrights beyond the specification in a manner that would constitute copyright misuse.
  • Oracle v. Google - Google Takes Exception to Third Damages Report
    • Last Friday Google filed a motion to substantially strike both the third damages report submitted by Dr. Cockburn on behalf of Oracle and the conjoint analysis report submitted by Dr. Shugan on behalf of Oracle. (718 [PDF; Text]) If successful, this motion will virtually preclude the Oracle damages experts from testifying at trial. PJ did a fine job covering the flaws in these reports identified by Google. Now we consider the likelihood of success of the motion.

      First, we need to recall that Judge Alsup put Oracle on a very short leash in allowing it an almost unprecedented third try to file an appropriate damages report:

  • Oracle Drops Final Claim in Patent '476 and Google Moves to Strike Portions of 3rd Oracle Damages Report ~pj
    • Oracle has told the court it wishes to withdraw its last claim of the '476 patent, claim 14, no doubt having read Google's letter to the judge asking for permission to file a motion for summary judgment of invalidity of claim 14. This is the last claim of that patent still in the case. The USPTO in December issued a final rejection of 17 of the 21 claims of this '476 patent, anyway, includingn all seven of the patent's independent claims, and while Oracle has until February 20 to appeal, the handwriting is on the wall. Whatever it decides about an appeal, claim 14, and hence patent '476, is no longer in this litigation.

      The value of this case to Oracle keeps getting smaller and smaller.

  • SCO and IBM Stipulate on Going Forward with Utah Litigation -- If Approved, It's Game On ~ pj
    • SCO and IBM have reached a stipulation [PDF] on how to go forward on reactivating the Utah litigation, and SCO has filed it in Bankruptcy Court in Delaware. Assuming it's signed by the judge, the Hon. Kevin Gross, in time for the April 23rd hearing now scheduled in Utah District Court in Salt Lake City before the Hon. Dee Benson on SCO's laughable motion to let only *it* go ahead and IBM not, I'd say it's game on. They've agreed IBM can proceed with its defenses and counterclaims. It was IBM that suggested in its opposition to SCO's motion that the best way forward was to ask the Bankruptcy Court to lift the stay on *both* parties, which is what the stipulation agrees to.
  • Oracle v. Google - Google Seeks To Knock Out Patent
    • Google is seeking to immediately knock out one of the remaining six patents asserted in this case, this time by summary judgment. In a letter to the court filed yesterday Google asks that claim 14 of U.S. Patent No. 6,192,476 be found invalid on the grounds that it claims unpatentable subject matter. (715 [PDF; Text])

      Google's argument stems for the court's determination a few weeks ago that the term "computer-readable medium" includes transmission media. (Google Wins on Claim Construction Issues) Google asserts that, by that interpretation, the claim became invalid. Google points to the finding in In re Nuitjen:

  • Software Standards and Patent Licensing
    • With Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility there have been a number of competitor's claiming Google (Motorola) is acting unfairly in its licensing of patents related to the H.264 and 3G/UMTS standards.

      Among the complaining parties are Microsoft and Apple, both of which claim that the Motorola Mobility approach to FRAND (fair reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing under the respective standards is anything but fair and reasonable. The fight is over the fact that Motorola Mobility (and now Google) is asking a 2.25% royalty for a single patent in each of these instances.

      While it is the epitome of chutzpah for Apple and Microsoft to complain about the patent licensing behavior of any other company, that does little to clarify the issues involved in patent licensing related to standards. This article will walk through those issues so we can all have a better understanding of such licensing and why different companies perceive the terms "fair and reasonable" from very different perspectives, depending on whose ox is being gored.

  • Understanding Limitations on Damages in Patent Infringement
    • A number of comments to a recent article on the Microsoft v. Barnes & Noble reveal some confusion on the issues of damages in patent infringement actions and the role that patent marking and notice play in determining when damages begin to accrue. This is not really a hard issue to understand, so let's start at the beginning. What do the U.S. statutes covering patents say:

      35 U.S.C. § 286 Time limitation on damages

      Except as otherwise provided by law, no recovery shall be had for any infringement committed more than six years prior to the filing of the complaint or counterclaim for infringement in the action.

      In the case of claims against the United States Government for use of a patented invention, the period before bringing suit, up to six years, between the date of receipt of a written claim for compensation by the department or agency of the Government having authority to settle such claim, and the date of mailing by the Government of a notice to the claimant that his claim has been denied shall not be counted as a part of the period referred to in the preceding paragraph.


      35 U.S.C. § 287 Limitation on damages and other remedies; marking and notice

Freshmeat (Last Update: 2012-02-23 04:51:45GMT)
  • JTcl 2.2.0
    • JTcl is an implementation of Tcl (Tool Command Language) written in Java that implements a large extent of Tcl 8.4 syntax and commands, limited only by API restrictions of the Java Virtual Machine. It is based on the Jacl interpreter from the TclJava project.

      Release Notes: Three new commands have been added: lassign, lrepeat, and lreverse. A new library module was added for manipulating ZIP files. A new command utility builds stand-alone application JAR files. Two bugs that previously caused exceptions while reading from a socket and globbing files were fixed.

      Release Tags: Stable

      Tags: Tcl, jacl, interpreter language

      Licenses: BSD Revised

  • Lynx 2.8.8dev.12
    • Lynx is a fully-featured WWW client for users running cursor-addressable, character-cell display devices (e.g., vt100 terminals, terminal emulators running on PCs or Macs, or any other character-cell display). It will display HTML documents containing links to files on the local system, as well as files on remote systems running HTTP, HTTPS, gopher, FTP, WAIS, NNTP, finger, or cso/ph/qi servers, and services accessible via logins to telnet, tn3270, or rlogin accounts.

      Release Notes: This release fixes a regression in forms caching from dev.10 changes and adds two charset aliases.

      Release Tags: bug-fix

      Tags: Internet, Web, Browsers

      Licenses: GPL

  • Darning 0.05.3
    • Darning is a tool for managing a series or sequence of patches to a software source tree, in the same vein as quilt but with extended functionality. It supports advanced patch concepts such as file mode changes and copying/renaming files. The GUI is the primary interface and the most complete, but a command line interface is also provided with fewer features at this stage.

      Release Notes: This a bugfix release to fix problems encountered when patching text files which are not terminated with a new line.

      Release Tags: Bug Fix

      Tags: Software Development, Source Control, Patch

      Licenses: GPLv2

  • libferris 1.5.12
    • libferris is a virtual filesystem that exposes hierarchical data of all kinds through a common C++ interface. Access to data is performed using C++ IOStreams and metadata is available as key-value pairs through the Extended Attributes (EA) interface. Rich support for filesystem indexing is included to provide timely search results for well into millions of files. Ferris uses a plugin API to handle a large range of data sources, metadata, and index and search strategies. Filesystems include file:// with monitoring, XML (mount an XML file as a filesystem), relational databases, ISAM databases (Berkeley db, tdb, gdbm, eet et al), xmldb, LDAP, Applications (Evolution, Firefox, Emacs), HTTP, FTP, sockets, and RDF (from XML, binary, soprano). EA generators include image, audio, and animation decoders.

      Release Notes: This release adds support for mounting statusnet servers, both local and identica.

      Tags: Software Development, Libraries, Filesystems

      Licenses: GPLv3

  • Atomic Tanks 5.3
    • Atanks is a multi-platform Scorched Earth clone similar to the Worms series of games. Annihilate the other tanks to earn money, then spend it on bigger and better shields and weapons to wipe out the opposition. It features a wide array of weapons, AI players, destructible landscape, weather, parachutes, teleports and a wide range of other features.

      Release Notes: This release of Atomic Tanks fixes some memory leaks, improves performance, and introduces thread locks to avoid memory corruption.

      Release Tags: minor bug fixes, Improvements

      Tags: Games/Entertainment, Turn Based Strategy, Arcade

      Licenses: GPL

  • MatrixSSL 3.3
    • MatrixSSL is an embedded SSL and TLS implementation designed for small footprint devices and applications requiring low overhead per connection. The library is less than 50K on disk with cipher suites. It includes SSL and TLS client and server support, session resumption, and implementations of RSA, AES, 3DES, ARC4, SHA1, and MD5. The source is well documented and contains portability layers for additional operating systems, cipher suites, and cryptography providers.

      Release Notes: This release throttles TLS re-handshakes on the server side to minimize the effect of potential denial of service due to repeated requests, rebrands the documentation and source code to reflect the AuthenTec acquisition of MatrixSSL, and adds Chrome False Start support to the example Web server application.

      Release Tags: Minor feature enhancements, Documentation Updates

      Tags: Communications, Internet, Web, HTTP Servers, Security, Cryptography, Software Development, Embedded Systems, Libraries, Networking, SSL, TLS

      Licenses: GPL

  • NouvaLinux Backup and Rescue 11.08.1d
    • NouvaLinux backup and rescue is a live CD with some special tools for making backups and system recovery. The main tool is an application made by RyXéo (a free software company): a partclone GUI. Backup is Clonezilla compatible: you can make backups with NouvaLinux backup and restore them with Clonezilla.

      Release Notes: The main tool is now fully translated into English (it was French-only in the previous version).

      Tags: Back-Up utility, clone, partition, disk

      Licenses: GPLv2, GPLv3

  • OpenCards 2.2
    • OpenCards is flashcard learning software. The basic idea of OpenCards is to use PowerPoint presentations (*.ppt) as flashcard sets. Slide titles are considered questions and the slide contents their answers. Based on state-of-the-art memorization and scheduling algorithms, OpenCards will help you learn any set of flashcards.

      Release Notes: OpenCards is now fully localized to Japanese and Simplified Chinese. Slide rendering has been significantly improved. A bunch of stability problems have been fixed.

      Release Tags: Minor

      Tags: Text Processing, Office/Business, education, Computer Aided Instruction (CAI)

      Licenses: BSD Original

Schneier (Last Update: 2012-02-22 06:53:59GMT)
  • John Nash's 1955 Letter to the NSA
    • Fascinating....
  • "1234" and Birthdays Are the Most Common PINs
    • Research paper: "A birthday present every eleven wallets? The security of customer-chosen banking PINs," by Joseph Bonneau, Sören Preibusch, and Ross Anderson: Abstract: We provide the first published estimates of the difficulty of guessing a human-chosen 4-digit PIN. We begin with two large sets of 4-digit sequences chosen outside banking for online passwords and smartphone unlock-codes. We use a regression...
  • Covert Communications Channel in Tarsiers
    • Marissa A. Ramsier, Andrew J. Cunningham, Gillian L. Moritz, James J. Finneran, Cathy V. Williams, Perry S. Ong, Sharon L. Gursky-Doyen, and Nathaniel J. Dominy (2012), "Primate communication in the pure ultrasound," Biology Letters. Abstract: Few mammals -- cetaceans, domestic cats and select bats and rodents -- can send and receive vocal signals contained within the ultrasonic domain, or pure...
  • Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Desk Lamp
    • Beautiful sculpture. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
  • What Is a Suspicious-Looking Package, Anyway?
    • Funny comic....
  • Self-Domestication in Bonobos and Other Animals
    • Self-domestication happens when the benefits of cooperation outweigh the costs: But why and how could natural selection tame the bonobo? One possible narrative begins about 2.5 million years ago, when the last common ancestor of bonobos and chimpanzees lived both north and south of the Zaire River, as did gorillas, their ecological rivals. A massive drought drove gorillas from the...
  • Cryptanalysis of Satellite Phone Encryption Algorithms
    • From the abstract of the paper: In this paper, we analyze the encryption systems used in the two existing (and competing) satphone standards, GMR-1 and GMR-2. The first main contribution is that we were able to completely reverse engineer the encryption algorithms employed. Both ciphers had not been publicly known previously. We describe the details of the recovery of the...
  • Lousy Random Numbers Cause Insecure Public Keys
    • There's some excellent research (paper, news articles) surveying public keys in the wild. Basically, the researchers found that a small fraction of them (27,000 out of 7.1 million, or 0.38%) share a common factor and are inherently weak. The researchers can break those public keys, and anyone who duplicates their research can as well. The cause of this is almost...
LXer (Last Update: 2012-02-23 04:38:02GMT)
  • 50+ E17 Themes for Download
    • The most current source for Enlightenment/DR17 themes on the web. Over 50+ themes that work with current SVN builds of the Enlightenment desktop.
  • Lightspark- A good alternative to adobe Flash player| PPA Ubuntu, Fedora RPM
    • The decision of adobe and google to allow Flash player only on google chrome browser via the “Pepper” API flash plugin, pose a real problem to users of Firefox, opera and other small browsers. Hopefully, there are many good alternatives to adobe flash player plugin that works like a charm
  • Major Linux Distributions Go Deeper With Amazon Web Services
    • It seems to be a weekly event. Every few days, a major Linux distribution introduces a new type of integration with Amazon Web Services. The usual suspects include Canonical, Red Hat and SUSE. For cloud integrators seeking to link on-premises systems with public cloud services, the Linux-to-Amazon relationships are worth watching closely. [url=http://www.talkincloud.com/major-linux-distributions-go-deeper-into-amazon-web-services/]Here's why[/url].
  • Rock Your Webcam Like It's 1995
    • Many Webcam applications exist for Linux. If you want to play with self-portraits, there's Cheese. If you want to set up a security system in your office, there's Motion. But, if you just want to have some fun, give HasciiCam a try.
  • Rank your Linux-Nerd Level
    • So you love your penguin powered computer huh? Just how does your level of Linux nerd stack up compared to the other Linux fans you know? Tally your points using the information below and find out.
  • Microsoft's Google Cloud FUD Could Come Back to Bite It
    • Microsoft has been going after Google hard recently, and while Google deserves a lot of the grief it's getting, Microsoft's cloud FUD could come back to bite it by sending a negative cloud message to its own potential customers.
  • Bye Bye Flash for Linux
    • According to a recent blog post from adobe, google and adobe are working on a single modern API for hosting plugins within the browser, the new plugin code-named “PEPPER” “aims to provide a layer between the plugin and browser that abstracts away differences between browser and operating system implementations.”
  • Mageia 2 Beta 1 Released
    • Popular Mandriva based derivative enters Beta testing for second major release, includes latest software
RootPrompt (Last Update: 2010-10-19 08:17:02GMT)
  • Block crackers with 3 locks to your SSH door (18 Oct 2010)
    • Security always requires a multi-layered scheme. SSH is a good example of this. Methods range from simple sshd configuration through the use of PAM to specify who can use SSH, to application of port-knocking techniques, or to hide the fact that SSH access even exists. Applying these techniques can make life much harder for possible intruders, who will have to go past three unusual barriers."Learn 3 ways of hardening SSH access to your system to block would-be crackers"
  • Bazaar: source control system (15 Oct 2010)
    • Bazaar is used to produce the Ubuntu Linux distribution, which is an enormous software project with thousands of components. If you're using a UNIX or Linux system, chances are that your distribution offers a pre-built Bazaar package. Bazaar is flexible enough to accommodate Subversion - a centralized system and Git - a decentralized system. This article introduces you to Bazaar's many appealing features."Intro to Bazaar, a great place to keep your code"
  • User space memory access from the Linux kernel (13 Oct 2010)
    • As the kernel and user space exist in different virtual address spaces, there are special considerations for moving data between them. Explore the ideas behind virtual address spaces and the kernel APIs for data movement to and from user space, and learn some of the other mapping techniques used to map memory."An introduction to Linux memory and user space APIs"
  • Techniques for migrating Perl to Python (11 Oct 2010)
    • Python programmers shouldn't get too smug. While many people agree that Python is designed in a way that makes it a highly readable language, there can still be problems with legacy, untested Python code too. Porting legacy Perl to Python can be a daunting task. In this article, learn some of the theory behind dealing with legacy code, including what not to do."Techniques for migrating legacy, untested Perl to Python"
  • New AIX 7 capabilities for virtualization (8 Oct 2010)
    • The IBM AIX operating system provides a highly scalable IT infrastructure for client workloads. Learn about the latest version, AIX 7.1, an open standards-based UNIX operating system, that includes significant new capabilities for virtualization, security features, availability features, and manageability."Learn about the latest version of AIX 7.1 - an open standards-based UNIX operating system"
  • Introduction to PowerHA (1 Sep 2010)
    • PowerHA for AIX is the new name for HACMP (High Availability Cluster Multiprocessing). HACMP is an application that makes system fault resilient and reduces downtime of applications. This article introduces PowerHA and provides a detailed explanation of how to configure a two node cluster. This document is very useful for understanding PowerHA and setting up a two node cluster."Get Power high availability by Configuring a PowerHA cluster" Introduction to PowerHA
  • Yeah - Learn Linux: Maintain the integrity of file (30 Aug 2010)
    • Learn how to check the integrity of your Linux filesystems, monitor free space, and fix simple problems. Use the material in this article to study for the Linux Professional Institute (LPI) 11 exam for Linux system administrator certification or just to check your filesystems and keep them in good working order, especially after a system crash or power loss. "Here's an easy way to keeping track of your Linux disk space" Yeah - Learn Linux: Maintain the integrity of filesystems
  • Live Kernel Patches with Ksplice (11 Aug 2010)
    • Ksplice applies kernel patches on-the-fly - no reboot required in a fraction of a second. Here's a hands-on guide to performing painless system updates. Learn how to patch a live kernel and give reboots the boot."Avoid reboots of your system with live Kernel updates using Ksplice" Live Kernel Patches with Ksplice