Back to Blogging…

September 13th, 2005 • 1 comment General

Well, it’s been a long long time since I’ve last added anything to this blog, I know blogging is about frequent updates, I know I have to free more time to blog, and I’m trying as hard as I can to do so; but, well, you know…

During the past month I’ve been extremely busy with many things, a close friend of mine came to visit from Canada, and since I only see him once a year, I had to spent some time with him. Another came from Austria. Others came from all over the world. I went to Dubai again and might probably move there permanently, we’re starting a company over there.

I don’t even know where to start with the updates, but during the next week, I’ll mostly be posting about what happened and try to catch up with whatever’s left.

My summer’s been great!

Kool Krashing

July 26th, 2005 • 5 comments Linux

The first thing that I do when I install Windows is disable its error reporting. To me, it’s absolutely useless, I’m not going to dig into a core dump, it takes way too much time, I’m not going to send any information to Microsoft because for some reason, I just can’t bring myself to trusting them with my privacy.

Yesterday, while emerge sync && emerge -uDN world, amaroK crashed. I’m not sure why it did, probably because of some library incompatibilities since the update wasn’t finished yet. But anyhow, when amaroK crashed, Kmail popped up with a new message reading:

amaroK has crashed! We’re terribly sorry about this :(

But all is not lost! You could potentially help us fix the crash. amaroK has attached a backtrace that describes the crash, so just click send, or if you have time, write a brief description of how the crash happened first.

Many thanks.

That’s got to be the cutest crash I’ve come across, it makes me actually want to send crash reports. All I had to do is click on send and get back to work, no hassles, no interruptions, just a little smile.

By the way, in case I haven’t mentioned this before, amaroK is the only media player that got me to switch from Winamp! I absolutely adored Winamp and had it running under Wine, amaroK changed that; but that’s a whole different story.

Re: Windows vs. Linux

July 25th, 2005 • 3 comments Linux

This might be a little late, given the original article‘s date. I don’t really remember where I found this link, but that shouldn’t matter anyway.

Let me cut this short. Turns out that Windows is better than Linux because you need to buy software to “ensure” its security! This is stupidity at its finest.

Read more »

An Anti-Linux Strategy for Microsoft

July 23rd, 2005 • Linux

Have Ballmer give a speech in Asia, or any place that is switching hogwild for Linux, and warn them that Linux has legal issues that can bite them, and have your salesmen mention that in their sales pitch. Use the phony baloney lawsuit as evidence. Next announce indemnification for your own products and make a pleasant contrast. Have the lawyers delay and delay and delay any litigation outcome to maximize PR benefits. Cross your fingers behind your back and say Microsoft is cheaper to run than Linux. Play with numbers until it can be “proven” in your paid-for “studies”. A mainframe computer might help out there.

This must be the perfect strategy to destroy Linux.

Honestly, I don’t know how people think that Linux can be destroyed. Corporates might be able to stop Linux from growing in the desktop market, or cut its (tiny) share from mobile devices, but trust me, Linux is here to stay.

There are many things that can change Linux’s fate, especially without proper corporate backing. Think Apple’s switch to Intel, Intel’s “plans” to cut off Linux of the media, DRM, the RIAA, the MPAA, extraterrestrials, and god-knows-what-else. Everyone seems to try their best they can to stop Linux from growing, and for some reason, they’re failing.

Intel thinks that if they start on the hardware level they’ll be able to stop Linux from playing legitimate content, or force Linux vendors to buy licenses for “special” software that can play such protected content. The fact is, Linux is made by a huge list of extremely talented developers who aren’t going to let this go, and I’m pretty sure that if Intel does utilize a hardware-level media protection layer, developers are still going to deconstruct, dissect and disassemble it, find a work around, write a kernel module and distribute it anyway. Nobody likes having his rights taken off, and that’s precisely what Intel’s trying to do.

A free operating system is particularly difficult to stop, since it’s commoditizing an essential part of computers, a part that we usually pay for; Linux is making that available to everyone for close-to-nothing cost. The only problem is that Linux isn’t represented by a single entity, and without proper commercial backing Linux is going to have a hard time dealing with licensing, IP, and legal trouble.

Essentially, it’s all about the money. Why would Apple, Intel or Microsoft want to hurt Linux unless it’s going to get them more money? Isn’t it a business strategy? If any of these companies finds a way to make Linux work for them rather than against, don’t you think they’d start evangelizing Linux as an “alternative” solution? I bet they would.

It’s still possible to stop Linux, only it’s not very easy. As long as its generating revenues for a few companies, you’re still going to see it around.

Open Source and Ecommerce

July 7th, 2005 • 1 comment General

A few days ago I gave a talk about open source software and what role it currently plays in ecommerce.

Generally speaking, open source software doesn’t play much when it comes to starting a business, but it can be extremely helpful as a base platform. Open source solutions can be anything between a simple shopping cart on your web site that allows you sell products, up to complete CRM/ERP solutions, like Compiere.

One of the very interesting things that I learned from one of my audiences (namely Karin Kosina, an FSF representative in Europe) is about a project called CACert. The idea behind it, to put it simply, is free signed and trusted SSL certificates for all! You got to love it, don’t you?

You see, many people still don’t know the difference between signed and unsigned certificates, or how they are useful. I don’t really like having to pay fees for a simple “stamp” on a digital signature of mine, worse yet, there are different prices for different “stamps”, depending on how and where you use them, whether for personal use, on one site, or server-wide.

So here’s how SSL certificates work without the technical blabber:

The problem with the Web is that it uses an insecure protocol called HTTP. It’s not encrypted, it can be easily sniffed and recorded, so as you know, nobody’s willing to send any sensitive information over such a protocol. SSL comes to rescue. It’s a layer over HTTP that uses a public/private key scheme in order to ensure that all data is transmitted securely. In order to be able to “talk” to another computer using SSL you need a certificate, it’s just like a piece of paper with a few information about you. Anybody can generate certificates, you can create a new certificate claiming that you’re Bill Clinton, Steve Jobs, or even Blunkila from Mars! But the problem is, who’s going to believe you?

This is where signed certificates work. Companies like VeriSign take your certificate and “sign” it using their own certificate in order to support your claim, basically, they’re reassuring whoever reads your certificate information that you really are who you claim you are, they checked.

This doesn’t really make SSL connections any more secure than they already are. I mean, if you’re connecting to a site over HTTPS and it’s using an unsigned certificate, this doesn’t mean that the connection is not secure, or that whoever’s sniffing around can make use of the data he/she is getting, all connections are still encrypted between you and the other party. However, you can never know that this party is who it claims it is, well, unless the certificate is signed.

You’re probably familiar with the scary message that almost all browsers display when you connect to a site over HTTPS and its using an unsigned certificate. When the browser detects this kind of certificates it displays a warning telling you “Hey, don’t be so sure these people are who they say they are…”, and you really shouldn’t be. Signing a certificate by a trusted company (such as VeriSign, GeoTrust, InstantSSL, etc.) is the only way to get rid of this message. You wouldn’t want to scare a potential custom off your site, now would you?

Just so you know, anybody can sign your certificate, even I can sign your certificate using my own, but then again, I too am not a trusted party, so I can’t really support your claim; well, I can, but who’s going to believe me? The trick is to convince browser vendors to include me in their list of trusted authorities, and that’s what CACert are doing right now, so, hopefully soon, you’ll be able to get a signed and trusted certificated for free… yaaaay.

Well, thanks Karin for the tip, it’s been a pleasure meeting you.

If you’d like to take a look at my talk’s slides, you can get them in OpenOffice Impress format and in PDF. I hope you like them