Older blog entries for iddekingej (starting at number 16)

Linux Advocacy
Today the server arived. A nice 3 GHZ Xeon /1GByte and a large giga sized mega-raid.Installation went fine.

I helped the sys admin to install linux (FC2 with KDE). He was verry
possetive and thought that is was really similar to windows.
(In the possitive way I think). The server is used as a database server (with Postgres).
Firefox
Donated 30$ for the ad campaign.
I read about a article about crashing browser because of mallformet html pages.
I wrote a little C program wich produce a file with random text and tags. It is 100% invalid html code, and I hoped (grinn) to crash firefox and mozilla.
But that didn't happen, instead it produced sometimes nice looking html pages. At the end it proves that a random generator can produce a better web site than Yahoo.

You can try, the source is available here

compile: gcc chk.c -o chk

run: ./chk <filename>

eg ./chk o.htm

2 Oct 2004 (updated 2 Oct 2004 at 16:55 UTC) »

Yesterday I installed fedora core. I have now WinXP,linux mandrake 10,Freebsd and Fedora Core 2 on one computer.

Installation was nice, it only messed with mine bootloader. WinXp is on the first partition and Mandrake on the second. FreeBSD and Fedora core 2 are on a second hard disk. It had allready Grub installed.Also I think the installer didn't look at the old installation. It noticed that there was WinXP on the firsts, but didn't look for an OS at the other paritions... I dunno.

FC2 is very nice, some of the system configuration tools are a little bit less than that of Mandrake. I don't like the software installer. It only list everything in Categories and not sorted by name. Because of this it is diffecult to find the right package.

Up2date is nice, but I had some problems. When cannected to a slow sever, it takes ages to download and the dependence check takes ages. Yum is fine, verry nice. While searching for a gui frontend, I discovered Synaptic. It can use the apt repositories. Works flawless, much better as the software installer delivered with FC2.

I also tried to compile The elaya compile, this went fine as expected.

29 Sep 2004 (updated 29 Sep 2004 at 22:10 UTC) »
Elaya project
Fixed some bugs
I keep working on the buildsystem only do bug fixing now on the compiler.
There is now a 'make install' after 4 years. I sounds silly,
but I never needed it for development really.
'configure' has more options now. It look much better now.

Linux Advocacy
Everything is going fast really. We all wanted to have Linux
so it wasn't really that diffecult. They just needed
a small push to go forward.

It isn't really big and it isn't about a lot of money. We
talking only about one computer. It will be used as a
database server. The organisation where I work for can't spend a lot of
euro's, because we need to reduce out expenses.
There are not many people in the organisation
who have knowledge about the things I need to
make desicion about.
Because all of this, I have a lot of responsebilities
when I make disicions in this
, but that isn't a bad thing.

26 Sep 2004 (updated 28 Sep 2004 at 21:04 UTC) »
Elaya project

New website layout and backend changed:here
(not yet satisfied but good enough for the moment)...

a link

Found interesting site del.icio.us, something with bookmarks... just look for you self..

25 Sep 2004 (updated 26 Sep 2004 at 19:10 UTC) »

If you wanne enjoy some mad uber trolling just search for 'bullmordt' with google.

Oh yes something about 'Clair Patterson'. Whatever the name suggest, he is a male not a female. Het was the first person who determend the age of the earth. During his inversitgation he discovered how much our athmospheer was poluted by led from fuel used by our cars. He started a campaign against led in petrol. It became a verry nasty fight because of the big $$$ companies (for example one called Ethyl). It damaged his carrier because those companies have a lot influence in the scientific institutes.

Some open source advocacy is starting to be succesfull... later more...

In an reginal dutch news paper there was an article about usage of opensource by Municipalities. The articel mentioned that
they save about 450 euro fot every desktop. One worrying thing is that there perception is to much Linux=Opensource.
Anyway some tests where successfull.

Yesterday I tried to use KDevelop. It looks nice, but i'm not enthusiastic. I din't use the Project Mangager
correcty wich gave me lot of problems. Some of those problems are bugs I think. I need to investigate this futher.

found an interesting article here. About how Stanislav Petrov saved the world for disaster.
Really scary. It shows also IMHO how dangeres it is to depend on computers.

21 Sep 2004 (updated 21 Sep 2004 at 21:41 UTC) »
kayaking

Not many people ever heard of canoe polo (for example here).
We allways have canoe polo training a monday's night, normaly after 7 O'Clock. In the summer we train outside in a small lake. In the winter we do train in a swimming pool. Until now we could train outside, but in a few weeks that is impossible because then it is getting dark at 6 O'clock. The canoe club does many other thinks like whitewater and flat water touring. Since few months I'am the web master of the club. Currently I'am redesigning the site. I think I make a CMS system for it (I can use an existing one but it is just more fun to make your own).(Btw it is not the new zealand site I gave before. It is a dutch site actually)

Secure programming part I

I'am not a software safety expert but there are some few things I can say about it.

First, it is inportant that there are about 4 different kind of safety bugs in software:
1) User/Admin errors
2) Bugs
3) Wrong protocols
4) A mixture of 2 and 3.

Second there a some things you can do avoiding security bugs:

1) Look at the kind of softare your are going to build:
Every type of software has his own rules how to build safe software

2) Look at every bit of the software where security bugs can appear.

For example when a buffer is used, ask your self are there any buffer overflows.
3) Wich data the program is used is untrusted? How can I make this data trusted when I need it.

4) How can I use mine toolset save? What kind of errors I can make.

5) Build your program in such way that it is easy to check where security bugs are(TODO: how).


That are a few things what came on mine mind when I though about how to make a secure software. Hmm need to search Internet if other had wrote about this... I think there is much more, but I have used mine brain to much today so i'am stopping....

g'night

I installed a new version of Thunderbird. It has now a rss feed reader. verry use full.

I'm pushing opensource at the organisation where I work for. We are allready using PHP and MySql. For the last 2 day's i'm installing php, apache and a open source Document Management System (sadly) on a win2000 box. It is used for a communication 'hub' ( I don't know if it is the good word), between different organisation. The communcation is through a private VPN network. I wrote some extentions to the DMS system ,and it is looking fine. Hopefull everything works out fine.

I also put mine new private web site online. Not much really. I used it mainly for a photo album (Mountain hike trips and some other stuff). The pictures doesn't look verry good. I think I need to rescan them.
Link to web site:here
Picture of last hike in norway:here

anyway....

Just came back from Norway, Mountain hiking.
Saw that Advogato was back up :)... needed to write something

Some comments about opensource software

When many people talke about opensource/free software, they talk about the license and the development proces. And when it is about free software also about fsf ethics.

I think there are far more inportant things thant the one just mentiont.

Many opensource software is developed by anything between a single software developer or a large group of programmers. That more and more companies starting to write opensource software should be inportant in wider acceptance of opensource software, but that is one thing what i'am not finding inportant. One of the things where i'am really interesting in is software not developen by a comercial company interesting in $$$, but a group of people doing something because they just like it. It will call that 'social software groups'. It doesn't matter if its opensource of freesoftware, they both have much in common. It is just a good antidote against the arrogance of big companies. It is a kind of social (r)evolution.

Big companies are dominating society to much, wich is sad because they are too much care about self interest and not because of ethical reasons. Those 'social software groups' can give some power back to the common people. Yeah but that is the fsf about, freedom of software? No! I find the fsf filosofie rather limited. It is not about freedom but about civilised behaviour.

Freedom

Americans find there freedom (of speech) verry inportant. But what hapend is that civilisation is sometimes is sacrificed for freedom, and freedom is more motivated because of egoistic reasons and not ethics. Sometime ago I saw a report on television about concerns of sale of big cars to americans. Some people were only interesting in their 'freedom' to owne and use of such car, and couldn't bother the devistating effect of those things on the enviroment. I can't call that ethics, but more egocentric behaviour. It is about civilisation. It is not sacrificing freedom , but that people take their obligation to others and society. Respect the interests of the (software)users I would say! And that is much more than freedom.

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