Distribute.IT: When a hacker destroys your business

It’s been almost three years since business owners Carl Woerndle and his brother Alex were caught up in a cyber attack so damaging, it destroyed their once prospering technology business, Distribute.IT.

At this year’s CIO Summit in Perth, Woerndle – now a cyber security advisor at Deloitte – gave a warts and all account of how he and other staff at his former company dealt with the crisis and the fallout.

The brothers founded Distribute.IT in 2002, a typical startup working out of a spare room with, as Carl puts it, “no money, lots of good ideas and lots of enthusiasm".

At the time, the fledgling firm was granted one of five domain registrar licences available in the marketplace following moves by the government to place more control around domain name management, and remove Melbourne IT’s monopoly position.

The company adopted a channel sales strategy, appointing resellers to on-sell its services unlike its competitors, which were focusing on retail business.

Over the next nine years, the firm branched off into Web server hosting, in 2006 building its infrastructure around virtual server technology. By 2011, it was operating three data centres and was an Australian distributor for Verisign.

Distribute.IT had secured a 10 per cent market share for Australian domain names with 250,000 under management, and more than 200,000 clients on its books.

“We were growing at 4 per cent a month,” says Woerndle. “We also had over 30,000 hosting clients on that infrastructure ... and 3,000 active resellers on our database at that time.”

The company had more than 50 global domain name accreditations and opened an office in Jakarta, Indonesia as a launching pad to sell through Asia. It was looking at a couple of acquisitions and a possible IPO in 2014.

CITY TIME the scam

Have you seen this "newspaper"? Every time in  a mat someone has to try sell it to me and today out of my curiosity I gave in, any way for just 15/= I had nothing to loose. here's the paper just two papers making it 8 small pages, talking a lot about sex and politics.

Well well The so called newspaper has no editors, writers, address, nothing. They make reference to "Our team" "this writer"....

















This "newspaper" is in total bad print. Evidenced by these photos

 I know I did not go beyond  5th Grade but what I see in this "newspaper" is BAD iglich, total unprofessionalism ad a rot of typos

 Did I mention something about sex? OMG Hata tenses ni chida.

 Phew

 Hey mr. writer, do you really know what you are talking about? I presume you were talking about Manu Chandaria :-/

And I thought, this must have been the most Honorable thing to do. OMG my 15/= is gone.



How is this related to Tech. oooooooh SNAP!!!

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Is Linux For Losers?

Source: Daniel Lyons, ~ FORBES NEW YORK - Theo de Raadt is a pioneer of the open source software movement and a huge proponent of free software. But he is no fan of the open source Linux operating system. "It's terrible," De Raadt says. "Everyone is using it, and they don't realize how bad it is. And the Linux people will just stick with it and add to it rather than stepping back and saying, 'This is garbage and we should fix it.'" De Raadt makes a rival open source operating system called OpenBSD. Unlike Linux, which is a clone of Unix, OpenBSD is based on an actual Unix variant called Berkeley Software Distribution. BSD powers two of the best operating systems in the world--Solaris from Sun Microsystems (nasdaq: SUNW - news - people ) and OS X from Apple Computer (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ). There are three open source flavors of BSD--FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, the one De Raadt develops, which is best-known for its security features. In a sort of hacker equivalent of the Ford-versus-Chevy rivalry, BSD guys make fun of Linux on message boards and Web sites, the gist being that BSD guys are a lot like Linux guys, except they have kissed girls. Sour grapes? Maybe. Linux is immensely more popular than all of the open source BSD versions. De Raadt says that's partly because Linux gets support from big hardware makers like Hewlett-Packard (nasdaq: HPQ - news - people ) and IBM (nyse: IBM - news - people ), which he says have turned Linux hackers into an unpaid workforce. "These companies used to have to pay to develop Unix. They had in-house engineers who wrote new features when customers wanted them. Now they just allow the user community to do their own little hacks and features, trying to get to the same functionality level, and they're just putting pennies into it," De Raadt says. De Raadt says his crack 60-person team of programmers, working in a tightly focused fashion and starting with a core of tried-and-true Unix, puts out better code than the slapdash Linux movement. "I think our code quality is higher, just because that's really a big focus for us," De Raadt says. "Linux has never been about quality. There are so many parts of the system that are just these cheap little hacks, and it happens to run." As for Linus Torvalds, who created Linux and oversees development, De Raadt says, "I don't know what his focus is at all anymore, but it isn't quality." Torvalds, via e-mail, says De Raadt is "difficult" and declined to comment further. De Raadt blames Linux's development structure, in which thousands of coders feed bits of code to "maintainers," who in turn pass pieces to Torvalds and a handful of top lieutenants. The involvement of big companies also creates problems, De Raadt says, since companies push their own agendas and end up squabbling--as happened recently when a Red Hat (nasdaq: RHAT - news - people ) coder published an essay criticizing IBM's Linux programmers. There's also a difference in motivation. "Linux people do what they do because they hate Microsoft. We do what we do because we love Unix," De Raadt says. The irony, however, is that while noisy Linux fanatics make a great deal out of their hatred for Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), De Raadt says their beloved program is starting to look a lot like what Microsoft puts out. "They have the same rapid development cycle, which leads to crap," he says. De Raadt says BSD could have become the world's most popular open source operating system, except that a lawsuit over BSD scared away developers, who went off to work on Linux and stayed there even after BSD was deemed legal. "It's really very sad," he says. "It is taking a long time for the Linux code base to get where BSD was ten years ago." Lok Technologies, a San Jose, Calif.-based maker of networking gear, started out using Linux in its equipment but switched to OpenBSD four years ago after company founder Simon Lok, who holds a doctorate in computer science, took a close look at the Linux source code. "You know what I found? Right in the kernel, in the heart of the operating system, I found a developer's comment that said, 'Does this belong here?' "Lok says. "What kind of confidence does that inspire? Right then I knew it was time to switch."

Earn Online Websites: Beware

I was reading some news about the Fired Yahoo CEO and saw a very appealing advertisement about making money on the internet while at home. I said to myself, now I want to prove this a hoax.

Every one needs a quick buck but you should also think if its as simple as they put it, the owners should have been the richest guys in the world. As the English saying goes "when the deal is too good, think twice"

I clicked on the link "careerpathjournal dot com", a very convincing nice URL and voila "A Nairobi, Kenya Mom [Kelly Richards] makes $6.795 /month.... " and I was Like "WTF" Not a "Wambui" or "Atieno" are you kidding me?

I had to hide my internet identity, that means I have to hide my IP from their server. How do I accomplish That? Web Proxy sites. I first try the hidemyass dot com one. And know what? Kelly moves to New Jersey I try another and another Proxy's in different locations of the world and Kelly keeps Moving. [see below]

 

I think I am at liberty to do a comment about this website - May be say I received my First $ 6,000 cheque. I moved to the comments section and guess what? You need to have your comment approved, All comments are anonymous and on top of all that there are no and i mean no authentication means, No Captcha [ so all comments are Doctored if you know what I mean.]

I did click the recommended link, apparently pointing to another site. "newonlineincomes dot com". The initial signup cost is around $200, try to leave the site by typing something else on the address bar and you get a message further trying to lure you into buying. now they bring the price to $99 (click ok and cancel) They redirect the page to another file, try to leave again and the price is brought again to $79. again click Ok and cancel try to leave again and the price becomes $49. Now you know they are bound to reaping at least $49 from each and every ambitious online wannabe earner.

 

Why a $25 PC? Because it's the price of a textbook

There is growing interest surrounding the Raspberry Pi Foundation and their promise of a PC that will cost just $25. We’ve seen how the OLPC has struggled to deliver a $100 laptop for developing countries, and yet Raspberry Pi is confident in delivering the $25 PC by November this year.

 

Although we know a bit about the PC, there’s still a lot of information missing, but further details are starting to appear as Raspberry Pi develops the machine further and talks to more people about it. Eben Upton, director of the foundation, recently gave a talk at Bletchley Park regarding Educating Programmers, which focused on the thinking behind the $25 PC. You can watch it below.

 

During the talk Eben explains that the $25 price point was decided upon because it is the cost of a textbook so it made sense. Students buy textbooks, so a PC priced the same is a natural fit and hopefully an easy purchase for them, their parents, or their school.

 

As to why a $25 PC is needed, it simply comes down to the need to develop programming skills while still young, a skill that seems to have disappeared in recent years. Eben explains this as due to the typical hacking and experiment platforms such as the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX81 all disappearing and being replaced with the closed game consoles. Even the PC has become closed as families typically share it and kids aren’t encouraged to experiment for fear of breaking it.

 

Other interesting gems of information that come to light during his talk include Raspberry Pi’s original wider scope of not only providing a cheap PC, but the curriculum that surrounds it. That has now been rethought with the learning part left to teachers and the community while they focus on the hardware.

 

The foundation has also realized that the $35 PC with more RAM and a network port is going to be the most popular device by a significant margin. Something we didn’t realize is that Raspberry Pi not only intend to make this PC work through a HDMI and DVI connection, they also want it plugged into old analog TVs just like kids managed with in the 80s. It also means you don’t need an up-to-date display in order to start playing with this device.

 

Although the $25 PC will be available in November, the foundation doesn’t expect to give out test units until October because there are still a number of kinks to work out. Also, don’t expect these PCs to look like the original USB-stick layout we saw a few months ago. The connectors simply don’t fit on a board that small, so instead expect a thick credit card-sized device or even a plug form. Any thoughts of it shipping with Ubuntu should also be scaled back with Eben mentioning vanilla Debian and LXDE as the current favorite, and memory optimizations being implemented specifically for the 128MB version to get that working well.

 

We can also rest assured Raspberry Pi already has a hit on its hands. Eben says he’s received emails from people around the world and working in developing countries asking how to place bulk orders. Already thinking ahead, Raspberry Pi believes there’s a market for resellers willing to pick up the shipping costs on containers full of $25 PCs. There is no hardware discount for bulk orders as the price we pay is the price of manufacturing the device.

 

As they are so small and cheap to make, we doubt there’s going to be a shortage of them available. Maybe there will be at launch due to sheer demand, but come 2012 they could be everywhere and changing the landscape for young kids and hobbyists learning to code. $25 PCs may produce the the next generation of computer geeks.

 

Source: Geek.com

Separate your career training from your education!

In most professions, a college degree is a prerequisite for a job,
even if doing the job doesn't strictly require one. Your degree is used
as a proxy to figure out whether you're qualified because there is no
better measure: "Oh, he went to a good school, he must be smart. Let's
bring him in for an interview."

Hackers are lucky because our profession is much more merit based. We
can be judged on our code rather than our degrees: "Oh wow, her code is
really slick. Let's interview her."

So why go to college then? Presumably to learn to code right? The
problem with this is that college doesn't teach you how to be a good
programmer. It might teach you about Computer Science, but there's a big
difference between Computer Science and programming. Without a whole
lot of outside work including internships and lots of self study, you
won't become a great programmer in college. I know many great
programmers who didn't study Computer Science and some who didn't go to
college at all.

Given that college doesn't prepare you for your career, the logical
thing to do would be to separate your career training from your
education.
For your career, you must become a great hacker on your own. Doing this
probably deserves its own post, but the short version is: spend lots of
time programming, learn many programming languages, read lots of good
code, contribute to open source software, start your own open source
projects that scratch your own itch, and take interesting internships.

What to do about your education is a harder question to answer. You
could skip college all together. It's expensive, and if you're already
good, you may just want to move on to real life. On the other hand,
college can be a wonderful experience if you can afford it. I met all of
my best friends in college, did fun things, expanded my mind, and grew
up substantially. There might also be outside forces making you go to
college even if you don't want to.

Because you're taking care of your career training yourself, use
college to learn things you're interested in. Pick a school with a
flexible degree system and hack it so you have as few required courses
as possible. You might want to consider a BA rather than a BS because BAs
generally have less requirements. If you can get away with only doing a
minor, so much the better. Take only classes you're interested in.
Music, Art, Literature, History, Computer Science. It doesn't matter. If
you're taking a class for any other reason than "I want to," you're
doing it wrong.

Education is valuable for its own sake. Just don't feel constrained
by the traditional definition of "a good education." We learn the best
when we learn for ourselves rather than for others.

Discussion could happen on HN if you're inclined: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2925865

SOURCE: http://dave.is/

Taking care of your laptop battery to serve you for Years

I have heard lots of people complain about their laptop batteries. You also must have heard people complain how their laptop batteries can not last for over 30 minutes. Just found it right and useful to talk about them today. Well there are facts you are supposed to know about batteries and most specifically lithium Ion batteries. These batteries are made to be used up. But a majority of laptop users plug in to the mains all time they are using their machines. Well in this manner the batteries are forever charging, they wont be used up as they are supposed to be. This reduces their cells' lifespan and deteriorate over time.You should know that lithium batteries are made to be used up. 1. Dont keep your laptop on the mains line after the battery is full 2. Use the battery till almost empty around 20%. Use it once in a while till completely drained then recharge it. 3. Never store Empty batteries for long 4. Never store fully charged batteries for long. 5. Extreme temperatures are never good for your battery and whole of your laptop too. I mean both high and low temperatures. Use your laptop on hard surfaces although they are called laptops, don't use them on surfaces that insulate heat. do not charge your laptop while using. charging generates heat, as well as hard disk, processor, vga card ETC…. Do not put your Laptop in the bag while in standby mode, hibernate it (sometimes computers come out of standby without your intervention) Finally quit leaving your laptop in the car or under sun. If your laptop is a desktop replacement, you better have two battery packs. change every 2 weeks and remember, do not store fully charged, completely drained or under extreme temperatures. With this You will bet some years service. Mine has has a 6 cell and hasn't changed performance for 2 years now

Email Security 101

We use our emails in a manner that may compromise our own security and we blame our flaws on others.  These few points will help you secure your mail box (and others too) as you use email in your day to day activities 1. Don't use one email account. Most newbie's think of an email account just like you think of your postal box number. It is a good idea to have at least 3 accounts (1 for personal use, another for online newsletter subscriptions and everything you want to do, and the last for business or job related work)   2. Don't hold onto spammed-out accounts too long. Over time, your email account will accumulate a lot of spam and junk mail. You will find that most of your time you have to wade around junk mail to get the email you really need. If this is the case, you will find that is better to discard the email account for a new account.   3. Please close the browser after logging out.   When you check your mail from a shared computer e.g in a cyber café, library or school, you not only need to log out but also make sure you close the browser. Some mail clients display your username (email address) even after logging out. You can also click the browser's back button and some mail services still do a cache of your pages (bad) If you are using Mozilla Firefox browser, before you start browsing, click tools>start private browsing or pres Shft+Ctrl+P   4. Remember to delete browser cache, history and passwords.   How many times have you heard someone claim their facebook account has been hacked to and some weird stuff updated? In fact the users are to blame but I always pity them when they complain because they never admit they are to blame. Once you are done at shared computer, be it in a cyber café or library or a friend's computer, make sure you clear some history. If using firefox just hit Shft+ctrl+Del    5. Please use Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) option when sending a message to multiple people. Most mail users I have seen reply or forward lots of mail to lots of people in the To: field. That is a bad habit considering all other receivers will see all addresses, the receivers get the message, forward the message and earlier addresses are appended in the current message. Stop and think. That is why most of us receive close to 50 spam mails every day.   6. Do not forward Chain Letters. The message is right there. And this includes that mail that says ".. If you don't forward you will not be blessed…" or you will die. These chain letters get into my nerves. An sorry to say I never read them. Especially long mails to me contain no sense (I just hit Del)   7. Don't think an erased email is gone forever. Take care of what you write and send via email. Even after deleting a mail from your sent>inbox>trash folders, the mails still reside in remote servers and can be retrieved very easily by professionals. These mails may come to haunt you years later.   8. SCAM!   How on earth do you win in a lottery you never participated? I don't have to talk about this. You get an email from an anonymous girl who claims to be the daughter of a certain late president claiming to be in need to transfer funds and you reply to that….   9. Phishing   Phishing is a type of online fraud where the attacker tries to imitate a certain website to make you believe it is a legit website. They usually steal logo's, and entire website designs, trick you to supply your personal details e.g passwords, credit card number e.tc   Before you click a link  in your mail, look at the status bar to confirm it is the link you really want to visit.   Signs of phishing include:       * A logo that looks distorted or stretched.     * Email that refers to you as "Dear Customer" or "Dear User" rather than including your actual name.     * Email that warns you that an account of yours will be shut down unless you reconfirm your billing information immediately.     * An email threatening legal action.     * Email which comes from an account similar, but different from, the one the company usually uses.     * An email that claims 'Security Compromises' or 'Security Threats' and requires immediate action.   10. Never Send personal and financial information via email. Any descent financial institution or online store will never ask for your financial information (e.g credit card number) via Email. They usually have a secured web address where you submit your data. The connection is usually SSL secured (Secure Sockets Layer) and ensure the we address starts with HTTPS:// for a secure connection. Emails are more hacked than any other online form of communication   11. Do Not Unsubscribe from newsletters you never subscribed to. Yeah. Spammers like this particular technique. They send out thousands of spam  with an unsubscribe link at the bottom. And because you are bad  enough to unsubscribe, you end up supplying your mail address. You now end up signing up for more spam.   12. Don't Trust your friends email.   I know you are very careful when you get a mail from an unknown party. But when it is from your friend, you think everything in it must be true. Most a time I get email from friends that are as a result of their accounts being hacked. Screen your friend's mail first before taking any action   13. Blacklist spam after deleting it.   Deleting spam does not stop the nuisance. Black list the address   14. Enable Spam Filter Most mail services and mail client apps have spam filters built in. Make use of the spam filter.   15. Scan all email attachments.   Nine out of every ten viruses that infect a computer reach it through an email attachment. Make sure you scan email attachments before you can open them   16. Do not share your account information with others.   I know its your spouse but s/he might not apply the security policies that you apply. Once you share your password with someone else, it is never secure anymore.   17. Don't use simple and easy-to-guess passwords. How on earth would you use a guessable password e.g. 123456, abcd, mypassword etc. Hacker try out guessable passwords which are usually English names and if they cant get in to your account; as a result of a strong password, they will simply give up. Use passwords with a combination of letters, numbers, caps, and symbols.   18. Encrypt your wireless connection.   You have a wireless router but you never care or know that it is open. Encrypt your wireless connection. It is more secure encrypting it using WPA2 standard. WEP is no longer secure.

31 things you should know about the Google's +1 Button

1. The +1 button will influence search rankings. Here is the exact quote from Google's David Byttow, from when the feature was first announced: "We'll also start to look at +1's as one of the many signals we use to determine a page's relevance and ranking, including social signals from other services. For +1's, as with any new ranking signal, we'll be starting carefully and learning how those signals affect search quality over time." 2. When a user searches, while signed in, their search result snippets may be annotated with the names of their connections who have "+1'd" the page. When none of the user's connections have +1'd a page, the snippet may display the aggregate number of +1's the page has received. 3. Google says publishers could see "more, and better qualified traffic coming from Google" as potential visitors see recommendations from friends and contacts beneath their search results 4. Google calls the +1 button "shorthand for 'this is pretty cool' or 'you should check this out'. 5. One a user clicks the button, a link to the content appears under the +1's tab on the user's Google Profile. 6. Google suggests clicking the button when you "like, agree with, or want to recommend" something to others. 7. The +1 Button is not the same as Google Buzz, though there are similarities. They both appear on your Google Profile under different tabs, but +1's don't allow for comments (at least yet. I would not be surprised to see Buzz's functionality get rolled into +1 eventually). 8. +1's are public by default. Google may show them to any signed-in user who has a social connection to one. Users can choose not to have them displayed publicly on their Google Profile, however. 9. There are different sizes and styles of the button that you can use on your site. 10. The button is even more customizable if you want to get more technical. The API documentation can be found here: http://code.google.com/apis/+1button/ 11. When a user clicks on the +1 button it applies to the URL of the page they're on. 12. Still, multiple buttons can be placed on a single page that all +1 different URLs (refer to the above documentation). 13. While Google suggests you use the button where you think they'll be most effective in terms of placement around your content, the company recommends above the fold, near the title of the page, and close to sharing links. Google also says it can be effective if you put it at the end of an article as well as the beginning. 14. By placing the <script> tag at the bottom of the document, just before the body close tag, Google says you may improve loading speed of the page (which is another factor Google takes into account in terms of ranking). 15. If you try to +1 a private URL, it won't work, according to Google. 16. You have to be logged into a Google account for the button to work. 17. While everyone can see aggregate annotations, signed in users can also see personalized annotations from people in their Gmail/Google Talk Chat list, My Contacts group in Google Contacts, and people they're following in Google Reader and Google Buzz. 18. Google points to these canonicalization strategies to ensure the +1s "apply as often as possible to the pages appearing in Google search results." http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=139066 19. The button is supported in 44 languages (though the annotations only appear in the English language Google.com search results for the time being). 20. The button will be seen in the Android Market, Blogger blogs, Product Search, and YouTube, in addition to any other sites that add them. 21. A lot of sites have already replaced the Google Buzz button on content pages with the +1 button 22. If you have a Blogger blog, you can add the button by going to Design > Page Elements on the dashboard, finding the "Blog posts" area, clicking edit, and selecting the "Show Share Buttons" options, where you should find the +1 button as an option. 23. The +1 Button will be available on YouTube watch pages under the "share" feature. Consider how valuable YouTube can already be to SEO, and take then take into consideration the search implications of the +1 button. 24. If you're signed into your Google account, Google will show you +1 annotations from your Google contacts on YouTube search results. 25. Google says adding +1 buttons to your pages can help your ads stand out on Google. "By giving your visitors more chances to +1 your pages, your search ads and organic results might appear with +1 annotations more often. This could lead to more--and better qualified--traffic to your site," the company says. 26. The +1 button will appear next to the headline on search ads. Personalized annotations will appear beneath the Display URL. 27. Publishers can get updates about the button by joining this group. 28. Google may crawl or re-crawl pages with the button, and store the page title and other content, in response to a +1 button impression or click. 29. Google has strict policies for publishers that it says it will use (along with the Google ToS) to govern use of the +1 button. Here are these policies in their entirety: Publishers may not sell or transmit to others any data about a user related to the user's use of the +1 Button. For the avoidance of doubt, this prohibition includes, but is not limited to, any use of pixels, cookies, or other methods to recognize users' clicks on the +1 Button, the data of which is then disclosed, sold, or otherwise shared with other parties. Publishers may not attempt to discover the identity of a +1 Button user unless the user consents to share his or her identity with the Publisher via a Google-approved authorization procedure. This prohibition includes identifying users by correlating +1 Button reporting data from Google with Publisher data. Publishers may not alter or obfuscate the +1 Button, and Publishers may not associate the +1 Button with advertising content, such as putting the +1 Button on or adjacent to an ad, unless authorized to do so by Google. Publishers may not direct users to click the +1 Button for purposes of misleading users. Publishers should not promote prizes, monies, or monetary equivalents in exchange for +1 Button clicks. For the avoidance of doubt, Publishers can direct users to the +1 Button to enable content and functionality for users and their social connections. When Publishers direct users to the +1 Button, the +1 action must be related to the Publishers' content and the content or functionality must be available for both the visitor and their social connections. Google may analyze Publishers' use of the +1 Button, including to ensure Publishers' compliance with these policies and to facilitate Google's development of the +1 Button. By using the +1 Button, Publishers give Google permission to utilize an automated software program (often called a "web crawler") to retrieve and analyze websites associated with the +1 Button.  30. The button is not available on mobile search results yet, though users may still be able to see the buttons on your pages. 31. According to Search Engine Land, while they may still be a while away, Google will launch analytics for the button, to show webmasters info on geography, demographics, content, and search impact. Apparently Google is working with launch partners to make sure reporting is accurate before they offer it on a wider scale. If you want the code for the button to add to your site, you can get it here. There are more discussions (including issues people are having with the +1 button in Google's Webmaster Central Help Forum. Source: WebProNews

Say Hello To Linux 3.0; Linus Just Tagged 3.0-rc1

For anyone that was doubting Linus Torvalds would finally part ways with the Linux 2.6 kernel series, you lost your bets. On the eve of Memorial Day in the United States and his departure to Japan for LinuxCon, Linus Torvalds just tagged Linux 3.0-rc1 in Git. It was just one week ago that Linus Torvalds brought up the matter of whether its time to end the Linux 2.6 kernel series with there already being 39 major releases and its development period having lasted longer than major series in the past. Linus at first was considering the next kernel series to be Linux 2.8, but then that changed to being the Linux 3.0 kernel series. It looked likely that it was the end of the road for Linux 2.6 with the kernel developers being quite positive towards a change. The discussion had largely been around whether to call the next kernel release Linux 2.8, 3.0, or something else. A number of developers were interested in the versioning being more date/time oriented. Some developers also expressed that this move to tagging the Linux 3.0 kernel would be a good turning point to remove some old cruft from the kernel, e.g. old subsystems and drivers that are seldom -- if ever -- used today, especially by those that are still updating their software components. There was also at least one suggestion of stalling the Linux 3.0 kernel change until the ARM architecture code was cleaned up. Linus rejected these notions that the kernel versioning change wouldn't be tied to such milestones, but such work could occur organically over time. The discussion over this kernel versioning change had died down in the past couple of days, but to some surprise, hitting my kernel Git notifications this evening is a "Linux 3.0-rc1" commit. The commit message from Linus Torvalds simply reads: .. except there are various scripts that really know that there are three numbers, so it calls itself "3.0.0-rc1". Hopefully by the time the final 3.0 is out, we'll have that extra zero all figured out. No Linux 3.0-rc1 kernel release announcement has yet to hit the Linux Kernel Mailing List with any other commentary from Linus, but it will probably be due out shortly. Under this new versioning model, the next major release of the Linux kernel to follow will be Linux 3.1, then Linux 3.2, etc. There will still be the stable point releases to each series as Linux 3.0.1, 3.0.2, etc. Besides changing the kernel name from what would have been the Linux 2.6.40 kernel to now being the Linux 3.0 kernel, there are a number of changes to be excited for when this release officially occurs later in the summer. Some of the notable items that are new to this kernel release include: - Cleancache support, with initial implementations for the EXT4 and Btrfs file-systems, among others. - A Microsoft Kinect Linux driver. - Various open-source graphics driver improvements. This includes Sandy Bridge performance optimizations, initial support for Intel Ivy Bridge, early work for AMD Fusion Llano APUs, and many other Intel / Radeon / Nouveau changes. But this kernel still has various open-source GPU driver bugs. The Linux 3.0 kernel will also lack a number of features including the Reiser4 file-system, the VIA KMS/DRM driver, an accelerated Poulsbo / PowerVR DRM driver, multi-GPU rendering, and various other long sought after items. The major Linux kernel power regressions have yet to be resolved as well, but that's still on my TODO list to finish bisecting those two nasty bugs. UPDATE: Linus has just written the 3.0-rc1 announcement and has sent it to the LKML. Below is the 3.0-rc1 release announcement in full. Yay! Let the bikeshed painting discussions about version numbering begin (or at least re-start). I decided to just bite the bullet, and call the next version 3.0. It will get released close enough to the 20-year mark, which is excuse enough for me, although honestly, the real reason is just that I can no longer comfortably count as high as 40. The whole renumbering was discussed at last years Kernel Summit, and there was a plan to take it up this year too. But let's face it - what's the point of being in charge if you can't pick the bike shed color without holding a referendum on it? So I'm just going all alpha-male, and just renumbering it. You'll like it. Now, my alpha-maleness sadly does not actually extend to all the scripts and Makefile rules, so the kernel is fighting back, and is calling itself 3.0.0-rc1. We'll have the usual 6-7 weeks to wrestle it into submission, and get scripts etc cleaned up, and the final release should be just "3.0". The -stable team can use the third number for their versioning. So what are the big changes? NOTHING. Absolutely nothing. Sure, we have the usual two thirds driver changes, and a lot of random fixes, but the point is that 3.0 is *just* about renumbering, we are very much *not* doing a KDE-4 or a Gnome-3 here. No breakage, no special scary new features, nothing at all like that. We've been doing time-based releases for many years now, this is in no way about features. If you want an excuse for the renumbering, you really should look at the time-based one ("20 years") instead. So no ABI changes, no API changes, no magical new features - just steady plodding progress. In addition to the driver changes (and the bulk really is driver updates), we've had some nice VFS cleanups, various VM fixes, some nice initial ARM consolidation (yay!) and in general this is supposed to be a fairly normal release cycle. The merge window was a few days shorter than usual, but if that ends up meaning a smaller release and a nice stable 3.0 release, that is all good. There's absolutely no reason to aim for the traditional ".0" problems that so many projects have. In fact, I think that in addition to the shorter merge window, I'm also considering make this one of my "Linus is being a difficult ^&^hole" releases, where I really want to be pretty strict about what I pull during the stabilization window. Part of that is that I'm going to be travelling next week with a slow atom laptop, so you had better convince me I *really* want to pull from you, because that thing really is not the most impressive piece of hardware ever built. It does the "git" workflow quite well, but let's just say that compiling the kernel is not quite the user experience I've gotten used to. So be nice to me, and send me only really important fixes. And let's make sure we really make the next release not just an all new shiny number, but a good kernel too. Ok? Go forth and test, Linus Source: Michael Larabel - phoronix.com

Sohaib Athar Gets Famous within no time

The guy who liveblogged through twitter (@ReallyVirtual) the Osama bin laden's attacks without knowing it, is already famous now. Being followed by thousands since morning
The media gone into his nerves wanting the narration of the events.
I think they should contact the Narval Officers who did the work for a clearer message.

Controlling your PC remotely using Twitter

In the last few days, I have found myself in a difficult situation where I would like to leave office early and there are some stuff I am doing on the computer that don't need much of my intervention, only need a check and switch off the computer when done.(e.g. Installing some heavy antivirus) How would you do this and you already left the office? This might lead to leaving the computer on till the following day.  Now I thought. If I ran the command "shutdown -s -t **", the computer might shut down before the its through. Same case applies to other auto shut Apps.   Option 2 would be the windows remote desktop connection: this requires a public IP, do some port forwarding and some good internet. This is not so secure for your PC. and its hectic too.   Option 3. Use online remote desktop controllers like Logmein. This might be a good idea but also need some fast, and I mean fast internet to do stuff on your computer.   So the only solution is think how to send a shutdown command to your computer remotely and easily. I came across a small program called "TweetMyPc" This small App checks your Twitter tweets for preset commands every minute. If your tweet is any of the preset commands, it runs the command on your computer.   Apparently, most preset commands are not working e.g. "shutdown, lock, getfile, logoff..." I am running TweetMyPc on Windows Server 2003 and think there might be some compatibility issues.   The App is friendly; you can create custom commands and point to a specific file. So I did create custom command pointing to my shutdown script. Tweet the command name, and the computer switches off just fine.   One problem is solved. Now I don't know if the computer is through or not. *thinking* the "screenshot" command on tweetmypc isn't working. I need a program to capture the screen and may be send the image via email. A command line print screen tool would help. I got the command line App to capture the screenshot. Working too well and simple. The App is called "cmdcapture.exe" Download the app to \windows\system32\ Create a batch file with the code "cmdcapture /f screenshot.jpg /d c:" replace screenshot.jpg with the file name you intend to use and "c:" with the path. Create a custom command on TweetMyPc to point to your batch file, give your command a unique name. tweet that command on tweeter, wait circa 1 minute and check your path to see if your file has been saved.   Its working. Now we need an app to send us the image file. And by the way, why do we need command line tools and not GUI apps? We want to execute our apps with preset parameters so we need not intervene. We need a combination of two apps here. One to encode the file to MIME and another to send the MIME attachment   Download Bmail and Mpack from the links "ftp://ftp.andrew.cmu.edu/pub/mpack/old/mpack15d.zip" and "http://www.beyondlogic.org/solutions/cmdlinemail/bmailv107.zip" and extract the contents of the Zip files to "…\windows\system32\"   Now add these two lines of code to our earlier created batch file on line 2 and 3 respectively. 2. mpack -s "Email Subject"  -c image/jpeg -o body.msg c:\screenshot.jpg 3. bmail -s mail.server-p 25 -t send@to.com -f send@from.com -m body.msg     -c specifies the octet stream file type. -o Is the file name where the translated mime will be stored. And its followed by the file path. On Bmail –s will specify the SMTP server -t email to send to -f email to send from -h generate headers -m specify the mime file you created earlier on with mpack on line 2   Again tweet your custom command, after confirmation (TweetMyPc will tweet the confirmation) check your mail. Your screenshot is there.   With the power of custom commands, there is a lot more you can do to control your pc using TweetMyPc. You just need to think an extra mile source: Morris. M.

A history of viruses on Linux

We recently gave you a brief history of viruses on the Mac and as requested by a user we wanted to give you a history of viruses on Linux. Given the tight security integrated into Linux, it is difficult to take advantage of a vulnerability on the computer, but some programmers have found ways around the security measures. There are several free options for anti-virus on Linux that you really should use, even if it isn't always running - a weekly or monthly scan doesn't hurt. Free anti-virus solutions include: ClamAV, AVG, Avast and F-Prot. 1996: The cracker group VLAD wrote the first Linux virus named Staog. The virus took advantage of a flaw in the Kernel that allowed it to stay resident on the machine and wait for a binary file to be executed. Once executed the virus would attach itself to that file. Shortly after the virus was discovered the flaw was fixed and the virus quickly became extinct. VLAD was also responsible for writing the first known virus for Windows 95, Boza. 1997: The Bliss computer virus made its way out into the wild. The virus would attach itself to executables on the system and prevent them from running. A user had to have root access for the virus to be affected, and to this day Debian lists itself as still being vulnerable to this virus. The threat to Debian is minimal though as users do not typically run as root.  1999: No significant viruses were reported this year but oddly enough a hoax message went around stating there was a virus that was threatening to install Linux on your computer. At the time the Melissa virus was ravaging PCs worldwide and on April 1, 1999 (April Fools Day) a message went out warning that a virus named Tuxissa was running about secretly installing Linux on unsuspecting computers.  2000: A rather harmless virus, Virus.Linux.Winter.341, showed up and inserted itself into ELF files; ELF files are executable Linux files. The virus was very small, only 341 bytes, and would insert LoTek by Wintermute into the Notes section of an ELF file. The virus was also supposed to change the computer name to Wintermute but never gained control of a machine to effect the change.  2001: This was an eventful year for Linux viruses; the first was the ZipWorm, a harmless virus that would simply attach itself to any zip files located in the same directory it was executed in. Next was the Satyr virus which was also a harmless virus, it would simply attach itself to ELF files adding the string unix.satyr version 1.0 (c)oded jan-2001 by Shitdown [MIONS], http://shitdown.sf.**(edited as URL causes Avast to block page). There was also a virus released called Ramen which would replace index.html files with their own version displaying Ramen Crew at the top and a package of Ramen Noodles at the bottom. Later a worm by the name of Cheese came out that actually closed the backdoors created by the Ramen virus. There were several other viruses released this year that were relatively harmless.  2002: A vulnerability in Apache led to the creation and spread of the Mighty worm. The worm would exploit a vulnerability in Apache's SSL interface, then infect the unsuspecting victims computer. Once on the computer it would create a secret connection to an IRC server and join a channel to wait for commands to be sent to it.  2003: Another harmless virus showed up, it was called the Rike virus. The virus, which was written in assembly language, would attach it self to an ELF file. Once attached it would expand the space the file required and write RIKE into that free space.  2004: Similar to the virus from the previous year, the Binom virus would simply expand the size of the file and write the string [ Cyneox/DCA in to the free space. The virus was spread by executing an infected file.  2005: The Lupper worm began spreading to vulnerable Linux web servers. The worm would hit a web server looking for a specific URL, then it would attempt to exploit a vulnerable PHP/CGI script. If the server then allowed remote shell command execution and file downloads, it would become infected and begin searching for another server to infect.  2006: A variant of the Mighty worm from 2002 named Kaiten was born. It would open a connection to an IRC channel and wait for commands to be sent and executed.  2007: An exploit in OpenOffice led to the spread of a virus named BadBunny. This virus would infect Windows, Mac and Linux machines. The virus creates a file called badbunny.py as an XChat script and creates badbunny.pl, a Perl virus infecting other Perl files. There was also a trojan horse released by the name of Rexob. Once on the machine, it would open a backdoor allowing remote code execution.  2009: A website for GNOME users to download screensavers and other pieces of eye-candy unknowingly hosted a malicious screen saver called WaterFall. Once installed on the machine it would open up a backdoor that when executed would cause the machine to assist in a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS). The DDOS attack was very specific and targeted a specific website, MMOwned.com.  2010: The koobface virus, a virus that spreads through social networking sites targets Windows, Mac and, in a more recent variant, Linux computers. Once infected, the virus attempts to gather login information for FTP and social networking sites. Once your password has been compromised the virus will send an infected message to all of your friends in your social network.  This is by no means a complete list of Linux viruses but it does cover the major ones. It also points out that most of the viruses found on Linux are fairly harmless. That doesn't mean they don't exist though. Be sure to keep an eye on what your downloading and where you're going on the Internet and you will most likely stay virus free. An occasional virus scan wouldn't hurt either.  Sources: hackinglibrary.ws wikipedia.org irc-security.de securelist.com f-secure.com cnet.com techrepublic.com lwn.net crenk.com

Windows 95: It sucks less

Windows 95: It sucks less 24 Aug 2010 7:00 AM Today marks the 15th anniversary of the public release of Windows 95. During the development of Windows 95, one of the team members attended a Mac conference. And not as a secret agent, either. He proudly wore a Windows 95 team T-shirt as he strolled among the booths. The rest of us back at the mother ship wished him well and started discussing how we could get access to his dental records so we could identify his remains when they were sent back to us from the conference. When he returned, we didn't kill a calf in his honor, but we did marvel at his survival skills and asked him how it went. — I got a lot of funny looks. And one guy, upon confirming that I really did work on the Windows 95 project, said to me, "I have to commend you guys on Windows 95 so far. It sucks less." That backwards compliment tickled the team's funny bone, and it quickly became the unofficial team motto: Windows 95: It sucks less. source: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2010/08/24/10053386.aspx

Use Google Like a Pro

About 9 out of 10 internet users use Google and 8 of those just don't know how to get the exact results. They just know how to type in "a whole long story" click search and get "a whole wrong collection of results" Then you will spend all your time trying to scroll looking for some relevant result. I have compiled a few tricks you can use to get specific results fast and precisely. 1. Don't use irrelevant conjunctions. Don't use irrelevant conjunctions like and, when, or. Just use the key words in your search unless you couldn't get the results you needed. e.g iphone 4 launch don't use "news about the iphone 4 being launched" 2.Search results only from a particular website. At times you need to get some stuff from a particular website. Google search can do this effectively. Just type in your search terms followed by site:website = replace website with the website you want to fetch results from e.g "joe biden visit africa site:bbc.co.uk" 3. Searching particular File types. At times you need to download particular files concerning a topic. for example you might be in need of notes about a particular topic or some litrature. Most of the books on thee internet are conveyed through Portable Document Format (PDF) files. syntax = search terms filetype:doc replace "search terms" with your exact search terms and "doc" with the file type eg pdf,doc, ppt,txt, rtf e.t.c e.g principles of marketing filetype:pdf 4. Define a word. Some times it is necessary to directly go to a word defination other than just search it. start your query with "define:" e.g define:phobia 5. Weather You need to know the weather for your town? don't type "weather for kisumu", it might take you an eternity. Just type weather:kisumu and there you are with instant results. 6. Google news. If you are in google news and you want all news from a particular country, just type your such terms followed by location:country. Replace country with the exact name of the country you need to get the news from. e.g constitution review location:kenya 7. Currency converter. Do you have to call your bank to just know roughly for how much a dollar is worth. just type you amount source currency code "in" converted currency code. e.g. 100 usd in kes With these I hope you are in a position ahead of the crowd.   =======================================       "Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day"   =======================================