Posts

Just wanted to post some thoughts on UNR 9.10 – Most of the netbooks utilize the Intel i915 based video cards and have HORRID performance under the latest xorg drivers. 9.10 fixes this and allows for UXA acceleration and was my main reason for skipping over 9.04 UNR. The image installs quickly and provides for the basic web based programs. The EXT4 (I use it on all my desktop/laptop now) allows for quick boots and shutdowns on the MSI Wind I have. A few points on 9.10 UNR: ...

A great post from W. Mark Brooks asks when did Information Security become IT Security? The point is very much in line with my triangle theory, that security is the pinnacle of IT and requires mastering the lower levels first. Though to counter the ITS vs IS argument I posted that IA is the more appropriate name. Post below: I prefer the military nomenclature of Information Assurance. I have carried it over to the commercial world and make sure all my security types carry that title now. I like the definition and what it means: ...

Wanted to share a quick “how does it work” about PGP WDE for Mac. http://www.pgp.com/mac/ This is the only solution that does pre-boot and true WDE for the Mac. The software is 189 for a yearly license or 239 for perpetual. The software itself is very “apple-ish” with great wizards and walk through for those not familiar with key based authentication and encryption. Some of the features are: WDE for Intel based Mac running 10.4/10.5, no SL due to the 64bit kernel from the debug trace on my Mac Pro :) ...

I posted this to ServerFault.com today. Folks loose site of requirements and systems engineering and it drives me batty. Here was my response to the guys question about redundancy and RAID/COOP/etc. ——– Every design and architecture should be requirements driven. Good systems engineering calls for defining the constraints of the design and implementing a solution that meets that. If you have a SLA with your customers that calls for a .99999, then your solution of N+N redundancy should account for all those LRU (line replaceable units) that could fail. RAID, PS, and COOP planning should all account for that. In addition your SLA with vendors should be the 4 hour response time type or account for a large number of spares onsite. ...

In economic times such as these it is imperative that architects and leads alike look beyond the glossy software catalog and instead to the web. In the past we often discounted open source as unsupported and hacker-like in the development efforts. One would hope that in this day of enterprise open source powering the majority of web applications that we could back away from the mantra of yesteryear. The argument often heard in corporate America is without a company backing it, how can you trust the source of the code? In the same bated breath they will speak to Microsoft and Oracle as pristine trophy holders of American Ideals. In this global economy and 24×7 development cycle there is very little code still developed stateside only. The pond and time zone allow for rapid development cycles and releases. It is ignorant to think that Microsoft’s code is not spattered with code developed in foreign countries. The bazaar development paradigm has extended well upon the weird GNU hackers in their basements, even Microsoft and other commercial entities have opened the doors to this development process. ...