LegRoom.net Server Move

Submitted by jbreland on Sat, 03/27/2004 - 23:38

LegRoom.net's main server will be moving this week (along with me) to it's new home in Memphis (Midtown). All website and mail services will go down Monday morning, March 29, and will not reliably resume until Thursday April 1 (just in time for April Fool's, great...).

Also, on a not-so-related note, I don't believe that I ever formally announced LegRoom.net's server migration a few months ago. This site is now being hosted on a bad-ass dual-Athlon system, with 1 GB of RAM. Yeah, baby! Anyone so inclined may check out the stats here.

Open Source vs. Open Standards

Submitted by jbreland on Sat, 03/27/2004 - 23:28

Here's a brief article on the importance of Open Standards, which, as the author rightly argues, is oribably the single most important consideration in technology today. Regardless of how superior some may feel open source software may be to proprietary software (and all readers of this site know that I feel that way myself), interoperability across all applications and platforms is the true holy grail of any project. Otherwise, you're simply limiting yourself, your application, and your customers.

Do read this article. Very important stuff.

The Luxury of Ignorance: An Open-Source Horror Story

Submitted by jbreland on Wed, 03/03/2004 - 10:59

Eric Raymond has a written a great rant on the usability problems of many Open Source programs out there, using his trouble configuring CUPS as a specific example. Now, hmm... why does this seem familiar? Oh yeah, because I spent nearly a year trying to get a similar setup working, and still haven't been able to do so. CUPS/IPP sucks.

Read the full rant. A must read for for any FOSS users and/or developers.

The Eight Rules of Security

Submitted by jbreland on Fri, 02/20/2004 - 22:08

This is an article I've been wanting to post on here for quite a while. This article discusses the major fundamental security rules, based on processes and policies rather than technology. A lot of this, honestly, is common sense, but unfortunately it's the simple things like this that are so often overlooked.

Traditionally, people look at the infosec field as something to do about firewalls and antivirus. They treat technology as THE solution, instead of simply the enabler. And it’s this fallacy that weakens any security implementation. Security is a process, not a product… and should be treated as such. Through the security lifecycle, policy and procedure needs to take precedence over implementation. It’s a bigger part of the circle for a reason.

Overall, this is a concise, well thought out, and well written security article, and is definitely a must-read.

The Eight Rules of Security

Sun's Java Desktop System 2003 reviewed

Submitted by jbreland on Thu, 01/29/2004 - 22:45

As we (should) all know by now, Sun is jumping into the Linux arena with it's own branded Linux distribution: the Sun Java Desktop System 2003. Despite the horribly misleading name, the "Java" Desktop System is actually a re-branded SuSE distro.

Mad Penguin gives us a fairly thorough overview of the new OS. To sum up, he gives it a 2 out of 5, with this quote included in the closing comments:

To be completely honest with you (and this is not meant to disrespect Sun), I would not deploy this OS in any situation (other than maybe the most basic user) at this time due to these and a few other concerns I have. It is not ready for the desktop, though I see potential for it in the future if Sun continues its push for the desktop.

Read the full review here.