Why is Linux a winner when it comes to utility computing?

Nevatia: Utility computing makes hardware less relevant. It doesn't matter if it's proprietary, a mainframe or a commodity Intel box. The operating system doesn't matter either, and that makes Linux a winner. You don't care what you're running as long as you reach your service levels. Utility computing levels the playing field for Linux. Linux promotes commoditization, and it comes out a winner.

I think that Linux makes sense primarily from the licensing cost standpoint. Service levels seem to be very similar. Support issues still weigh in M$ favor. So the big difference is whether M$ will adjust their licensing to compete with Linux in utility computing. As Linux makes inroads and Linux support issues drop, M$ loses its monoply pricing and the easy money. Small businesses is M$ saving grace.

Yesterday I installed the latest Baseline Security Analyzer and started applying patches. This version is much more useful than the previous version and HFNETCHKLT. The big reason is that it can scan more products. As an example it pointed out that I was missing the latest patches for Exchange 2000, SQL 2000, MDAC, and MSXML. Windows Update identified that the MDAC patch was missing.

MBSA can scan for security updates in the following products:

• Microsoft Office 
• Exchange Server 2003
• MDAC 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, and 2.8
• Microsoft Virtual Machine
• MSXML 2.5, 2.6, 3.0, and 4.0
• BizTalk Server 2000, 2002, and 2004
• Commerce Server 2000 and 2002
• Content Management Server 2001 and 2002
• Host Integration Server 2000, 2004, and SNA Server 4.0

“The Bush Administration never saw the war in Iraq as either a stand-alone operation or as distinct from the generalized war on the Islamist movement that al Qaeda was part of. As clumsy, and at times, as devious the public presentation of the war was, it had a clear logic. Despite ongoing tactical problems in and around Baghdad, the broad strategic goals of the Iraq campaign are being realized. Therefore, the question now is: What will the next stage of the U.S.-Islamist war look like?“

I have to admit that I am very tired of the recent media buzz about faulty MWD intelligence. I am developing a mild case of cyncism toward the administration and the quality of the intelligence community even though I feel Saddam got what he deserved.

This stratfor article is an intriguing analysis of current Iraqi and al Qaeda events. I am looking forward to seeing how well the forecast for Saudi Arabia and Pakistan pans out over this election year. If he is correct this will be a great year for the newscasters.

Distribution Release: Knoppix STD 0.1. The first stable version of Knoppix STD has been released: “I'm pleased to announce Knoppix-STD 0.1. Boot the CD and hit Alt-F7 for an introduction to the new features.” Download: knoppix-std-0.1.iso (497MB);… [DistroWatch]

This is a customized version of knoppix that looks slightly better for the security consultant. It has a lot of forensic(i.e. legal hacking tools) pre-installed

I installed Adobe's Photoshop Album SE yesterday. I was looking for some wrestling photos I have taken recently and I was having trouble finding and organizing them. I also needed to adjust the lighting and resize a few of them before sending. I thought there had to be a better way to organize my photos. I downloaded the SE version a couple of days ago when Acrobat reader told me there was a new reader and asked if I wanted to download both. I was pleasantly surprised. Although I like Adobe's software I find their products to be overpriced. The full version costs $39.95 and the ability to add new categories. I could use the categories to organize my horse photos. Both the SE and full version display the date and time the photo was taken from the EXIF info. You can search for photos based on date, caption, or note. The packaging of the photos into different formats is cute but of limited interest for me. I would like to repeat searches of the network drives and track the copyright also. I will play with it for a few more days before I decide but it has some real potential.

I went to www.fedoranews.org yesterday and found several helpful tutorials. I used the tutorial about fedora mirrors to modify my yum and up2date configuration to use different mirrors. I initially changed it to a mirror located at Miami University(Ohio) and had a problem with the released updates section. The error messages were very cryptic so I figured out the guilty party by guessing. I got it to work with mirrors in California and left it there. I tested it by installing the Flash-plugin.

“Because of the generally crappy CSS standards support in modern browsers, a number of techniques have been developed to hide CSS stylesheets, rules, and declarations from browsers that won't understand or will mis-interpret them, or to set different values to the same CSS property in different browsers in order to acheive the same appearance on all (or most) browsers. On these pages, I've collected a number of these techniques (usually called filters or hacks) and documented what browsers they work on. The W3C validator may reject code that appears to follow the letter of the emerging CSS3 standards. In such cases, I've assumed that the filter is valid CSS. In the summary tables, the background color of the CSS Version column indicates whether each filter passes the W3 validator or not (green = validates; red = doesn't) so that you can stick to filters that have been given this official seal of approval (I've removed all the obviously non-valid hacks to their own section).“

This is a nice link to have in your web developers toolbox.

I finally got around to working on a RegExpr for my mailing lists in Mailwasher. I am averaging about 150 pieces mail a day and 80% is spam. The problem is that I am not consistent on my filtering and some mail is getting deleted. For some of the mailing lists I put them in my whitelist. For the rest I filter on the 'To', 'From', or 'Subject' fields using the contains operator. The contains operator is okay but I use up a rule for every mailing list and each filter is limited to ten rules. I could create more filters but I like to see the summary count of my mailing list mail in the mail statistics. Using RegExpr for some of this filtering seems like a better idea. To help me get it right I downloaded RegCoach and opened my Programming Perl book. The biggest problem was to escape the metacharacters(e.g. [ ] .). My initial testing showed the new rules to be working but I will continue to tweak and start disabling entries in the friends list.

Parrot's Kick Ass. I didn't know parrots could live to be this old. I just hope that if I make it to 104,… [IMAO]

This is way too funny! Winston Churchill's parrot is the oldest living bird in England and Winston taught it to cuss at Hitler and the Nazi's. Although the bird is called Charlie she is a female.

I ran a vulnerability scan on my local network using Nessus after reading a nice How-To article I found on SecurityFocus. The scan took a pretty long time but it did not crash anything. The scan did not show any major vulnerabilities but I have a couple of items I need to research. Oh well!