Elijah Newren in the Gnome Journal

Miscellaneous, OpenClue Comments Off

I thought the readers of the Utah Open Source Planet would like to know about Elijah being in the latest Gnome Journal. Elijah is also part of Planet Gnome and sends a bunch of readers our way when he mentions our humble little Planet there.

Elijah, thanks for the work you do for G. N. O. M. E. ;)

Updated Google Maps

Miscellaneous, Open Source, OpenClue Comments Off

No, I didn’t get Google Maps integrated into Utah Open Source Planet (been *way* to busy at work). But, while messing around with it, I noticed my neighborhood has been updated. Here you see (bottom right) the plot where my house was built.

Empty Plot

Anyway, If you are on the Planet, please send me your longitude and latitude so I can place you on the map. Point us to your home, work or a park near by. The best site to find your longitude and latitude is GeoCoder.

UPDATE:

I should have been more clear. Can I get longitude and latitude like this?

lon = ##.######
lat = -###.######

Email them to gabe(a)gundy.org.

Google Maps and the Planet

Miscellaneous Comments Off

Today, I took the first few steps toward adding Google Maps to the Utah Open Source Planet. I’m going to have the pop-up box show the hackergochi of each person along with a direct link to their web site. Should be fun!

P.S. Keep your eye on the bottom of the page. I’ll leave the map there while I work on it.

Asterisk and RHEL

Miscellaneous 2 Comments »

If you do Asterisk on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (or CentOS) *and* need zaptel hardware, you should be aware of a bug that may cause you to have more downtime then you would like. The latest Zaptel will not build with some kernels “as is.” It seems that there is a minor spelling error in recent Red Hat kernels (I don’t have version numbers - you’ll know if you have it).

What’s crazy is that the bug report that aims to correct the spelling error contains a misspelling itself! I first found the bug on Digium’s list, which *also* misspells the fix!

This is the file that needs edited (line 407):

/usr/src/kernels/2.6.9-34.EL-i686/include/linux/spinlock.h

to read:

#define DEFINE_RWLOCK(x) rwlock_t x = RW_LOCK_UNLOCKED

Hopefully this will save some poor soul from enduring unnecessary pain.

Bill Gates mocks MIT’s $100 laptop project

Miscellaneous, Ridiculous Comments Off

Bill Gates looks pretty stupid saying stuff like this about the One Laptop per Child (OLPC).

Laptop Prototype

A little taste of it…

“If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you’re not sitting there cranking the thing while you’re trying to type,” Gates said.

I can’t help wondering what he would be saying if those systems were going to run Windows on Microsoft hardware.

Before his critique, Gates showed off a new “ultra-mobile computer” which runs Microsoft Windows on a seven-inch (17.78-centimeter) touch screen. Those machines are expected to sell for between $599 and $999, Microsoft said at the product launch last week.

Sour grapes.

Fishy (not phishy) email

Miscellaneous, Web Comments Off

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something isn’t right about this email…

lame spam

New Planet for Utah Open Source Users

Miscellaneous, Open Source, OpenClue, Web Comments Off

There is a new Planet hosted at OpenClue for Open Source hackers/users/zealots who are active in the Utah community. Why would OpenClue host this? From their web page:

We believe in Open Source. We believe in sharing information.”

Let’s hope that sharing these feeds will make Utah’s Open Source community a little bit stronger :)

Admin password readable by any user in “Breezy” (Ubuntu)

Linux, Miscellaneous, Open Source, Ridiculous 1 Comment »

D’oh! Bug #34606” says it all! This is bad, bad, bad. Wow, what an oversite!

I’m currently running Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.12-10-386 on my single user desktop. Let’s see how I do…

gabe@office:~$ sudo grep MyPassword /var/log/* -R
/var/log/debian-installer/cdebconf/questions.dat:Value: MyPassword
/var/log/installer/cdebconf/questions.dat:Value: MyPassword

Ouch, Ouch, Ouch! The admin’s password in PLAIN TEXT! Oh, this is embarrassing for Ubuntu! It gets worse still. Check out the permissions on the file:

gabe@office:~$ ll /var/log/debian-installer/cdebconf/questions.dat
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 62118 2006-02-17 08:33 /var/log/debian-installer/cdebconf/questions.dat

gabe@office:~$ ll /var/log/installer/cdebconf/questions.dat
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 62118 2006-02-17 08:33 /var/log/installer/cdebconf/questions.dat

That’s right, world readable. Doesn’t get much worse then that. Well, it’s only locally exploitable. Little consolation!

“Welcome to my server. Would you like to own it?”

Where are my party peeps?

Miscellaneous, Open Source, Web 3 Comments »

I thought this web traffic map for my site was interesting (first 500 visitors of the year)…

map

Most of my visitors are Open Source loving admins or programmers. Specifically, they tend to be Asterisk hackers. To me, this kinda seems like a map of hot-spots for Open Source.

P.S. Although I’m in UT, I think the big dot in AZ is really me.

Good take on Web 2.0

Miscellaneous, Web No Comments »

I know this is old, but if you haven’t read it, you must. This guy nails it on the head. If you have ever said the words “web-two-oh “and “ajax” in the same sentence, I worry you have been carried away. Reading the above link will guide back to earth.

I simply must quote…

To you who are toiling over an AJAX- and Ruby-powered social software product, good luck, God bless, and have fun. Remember that 20 other people are working on the same idea. So keep it simple, and ship it before they do, and maintain your sense of humor whether you get rich or go broke. Especially if you get rich. Nothing is more unsightly than a solemn multi-millionaire.

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