Tag Archives: Tech Stuff

Computer Networks

| Wednesday, 9 November, 2005

Bought myself a geek book last week, which according to Wouter Verhelst is the best computer-related book ever. As some other people also acknowledged me that and I got good impressions with reviews, I got out and bought the Dutch version.

Symantec antivirus stops production

| Saturday, 5 November, 2005

Last week I witnessed an upgrade of the Symantec Anti-virus client to version 10, at a major customer. This company represents a Benelux division of a multinational who sels fast moving consumer goods. Picture a big American, Fortune 500 company.

After a period of testing several standard desktop deployments, the team involved with this upgrade decided to effectively deploy the new client, starting at the local premises at the Belgium production plant, from which they operated. Setup the server, push the clients.

Sony DRM Installs a Rootkit

| Tuesday, 1 November, 2005

For whom still thinks DRM ain’t no problem, slashdot reports how Sony DRM Installs a Rootkit: SysInternals.com guru Mark Russinovich has a detailed investigation of a rootkit from Sony Music. It’s installed with a DRM-encumbered music CD, Van Zant’s “Get Right with the Man”. (Mmmm, delicious irony!) The rootkit introduces several security holes into the […]

On the problems of information archiving

| Thursday, 20 October, 2005

Everybody watching CNN uses a lot of technologies first developed for, and as a result of, space exploration. The scientific data and engineering know-how collected in those first space missions are extremely valuable knowledge that should remain available forever.

Unfortunately, storing valuable data inside computers is no guarantee of its availability. Did you know that scientists “couldn’t read magnetic tapes from the 1976 Viking landings on Mars?… With the data in an unknown format, they had to track down printouts and hire students to retype everything.” That was quite a waste of money, wasn’t it? This situation occurred less than 30 years ago, and it was able to be fixed because paper copies were available, a format everybody could read.

Debian Sarge rsync package updated

| Saturday, 24 September, 2005

If you experience the same problem I did with the rsync and rsnapshot combo, I provide an updated package rsync_2.6.4-6.svg1_i386.deb which can be found amongst my downloads, together with all the source. I hope this package was built like it should. If you have extensive knowledge on Debian packaging, as a Debian Devekoper or not, I’d be glad to hear your feedback, as this stuff is quite new for me.

Linux Consultants Survey

| Saturday, 17 September, 2005

Linux Journal is preparing an article about Linux Consultancy and requests people to participate to a survey. Altough I can’t consider myself a Linux Consultant, I do am an IT Consultant and think one should not narrow its activities as in Linux and non-Linux. As some questions made me sum up what I think of Open Source systems and Linux and what one can do with it in my business (Small Business Network Consultancy), I’m posting what I’ve written up.

Hula Project Web calendar

| Thursday, 25 August, 2005

Some time ago I wrote about an Ajax based web calendar. The same stuff is now implemented in the Hula Project ‘s web calendar. Check out this flash video and start drooling. The Hula project is a free software/open source mail and calendar project announced by Novell. It is derived from an existing product by […]