Archive for the ‘Open Source’ Category
The Internet’s domain name service (DNS) is based on open source BIND.
Trouble is BIND is insecure. As security expert Dan Kaminsky discovered in 2008 the cache can be poisoned, people redirected to malware sites.
So do you go with something proprietary, like Skye? You could, but there is another option, OpenDNSSEC, which hit Version 1.0 this week.
OpenDNSSEC adds digital signatures to DNS requests before they are acted upon. It’s still not perfect. Until standards are developed you need to connect with your parent zone registrar periodically to assure security.
But it’s a lot better than nothing. Nothing is, unfortunately, what a lot of sites are offering.
The release of a working version of OpenDNSSEC gives the open source process another shot at getting DNS right. Big companies are earning big money keeping customers’ DNS secure. If you are a big company such protection will look cheap.
If you are not a big company, however, you may not be able to afford that kind of security. The fact so many companies can’t afford it also helps the bad guys.
Like everyone else I don’t know everything, and I do make mistakes. But I try to fix my mistakes and when I don’t know something I know who to call, or how to find who to call.
OpenDNSSEC should be on every good security manager’s bookmarks.
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Red Hat’s release, in beta, of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 accelerates a race to the clouds among software vendors that will continue as the year goes on.
The term cloud computing is becoming problematic, as it becomes evident this is just the next evolution of what we used to call the mainframe.
All we’re doing is using virtualization on server farms, meaning your applications and data don’t have to live in a particular location, freeing capacity and simplifying things.
But this is a very big deal. Virtualization eliminates a key advantage of Windows, something Microsoft must respond to. It accentuates scaling advantages that Linux, with its Unix heritage, has long had, which is why Red Hat is doing all it can to explore the meaning of that.
One way is through Infinispan, an open source project meant to reduce the bottleneck databases now have on cloud computing. By building a new data structure format, one compatible with a virtualized environment, Linux could do to Oracle what it has already done to Windows, make it less relevant in high-end computing.
The need for such tools is only going to accelerate as companies like Eucalyptus push clouds as something anyone can have. This is computing evolution in action. Something becomes possible, then commonplace, and it eventually gets cheap as chips.
What happened to Silicon Graphics in the 1990s, high-end graphics moving from dedicated workstations to chips and software, is going to happen in this decade to Microsoft’s and Oracle’s market advantages. Open source is grinding down those advantages through cloud computing.
It’s the big story of this decade.
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One thing we can say for certain about the coming decade.
The phone network is going away. Everything is going digital.
This is already taking place. Cell networks are all-digital, because you can cram more calls into less spectrum by digitizing and compressing them.
Millions of people like me are dumping their phone lines and taking numbers with us. We save money, it’s more convenient, and it’s a more efficient use of the resource. Large enterprises have also transferred their phone service to digital networks. Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) saves money.
Now the revolution is hitting the small and medium-sized business community, the last holdouts against digitization. Open source is helping.
Digium calls its program Extreme Phone Makeover. Using open source Asterisk, productized as the Switchvox Unified Communications system and Polycom phones, Digium promises to give you a 21st century communication system, in order to demonstrate what this can mean for everyone else.
What it means is better service at lower cost. By running calls over the Internet rather than through a dedicated phone line long distance charges go away. Instead of using an entire line you’re using a portion of shared digital capacity on that line. You now have the bandwidth to do other things, like conferencing and database look-ups.
One network, digitized, instead of two networks, one digital and one analog, makes all kinds of economic sense.
It makes sense for everyone. ADSL runs at “just” 1.5 Mbps mainly because it’s taking up just a portion of your phone line. The rest is still analog, so you can talk on the phone while your kid is downloading The Daily Show in the next room.
If that copper were all-digital you could have more bandwidth. DSL would run faster, and it would be effective over longer distances.
By lighting some of its dark fiber and seeking applications, Google is accelerating this important trend. Increase demand for faster digital services while reducing demand for analog services and phone companies are bound to respond.
Voice is a low-bandwidth service. Text is an even lower-bandwidth service. The time is long past for moving these services onto digital networks and clearing out space for better broadband.
Digium and Google are doing the phone companies a favor by showing them the way forward. Disruptive is good.
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Microsoft is retreating to its Windows base in enterprise search, announcing it will stop supporting Unix and Linux cores on its FAST ESP after the next release.
The blog post from FAST CTO Bjorn Olstad was downright apologetic, nothing like the spin Microsoft is noted for.
Many of our customers run FAST ESP on Linux and UNIX today, and we recognize that our future focus on Windows means change.
Doesn’t sound like change he believes in, does it?
Microsoft spent $1.2 billion on FAST just two years ago, and critics say many of those users are left stranded by its decision.
But that’s not even approximately true. The Apache Foundation has two open source alternatives, Solr and Lucene. Paid support for both Solr and Lucene is available from Lucid Imagination.
Lucid is already bragging on its Web site that its customers include the White House, Netflix, and C|Net, from which ZDNet emerged. (CBS is now parent to both.) Not bad for an outfit that conjured up its first outside investment just last year. (Note: C|Net blogger Matt Asay is on Lucid’s advisory board.)
On Lucid’s blog, marketing guy David Fishman said the company is unsurprised by the Microsoft decision.
If even the FAST development team itself needed to drop everything to make FAST work on dot-net, how hard would it be for a FAST-on-Not-Windows customer?
Fishman was being polite in placing a picture of Claude Rains as Capt. Louis Renault in Casablanca on his blog post. ZDNet does not have to be polite. Hence, Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons.
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Hey, you, get off of my cloud.
Clouds took another step toward being just-another-computer this week as Eucalyptus and Terracotta began joint marketing of a system that mimics the Amazon EC2 cloud with scaled Java.
Both companies are open source. (Picture from ZDNet Asia.)
Eucalyptus is bringing its version of the Amazon AWS technology to the party while Terracotta totes the Java. A Webinar is planned for February 25 to introduce the system and you can sign up here.
IBM has been building private clouds for a few years, both selling and leasing systems around the world. With the new, as-yet unnamed system (Eucacotta? Terralyptus?) the two say fundamental problems with scaling access to SQL databases can now be addressed efficiently.
Terracotta has already done work in transaction processing, while Eucalapytus lists NASA among its customers.
Terracotta CEO Amit Pandey predicted the new system would be “ideal for enterprises that are adopting the cloud as their IT infrastructure.”
The announcement will be a big help for Amazon, which leads the cloud race so far but is being hammered in the media by Google and Microsoft.
The system being delivered will allow companies to build clouds that can easily off-load to Amazon, or pick up Amazon instances, creating “hybrid” clouds with more capacity than a company may be able to afford for itself.
Eucalyptus is expecting to sign other, similar ideas throughout the year as it seeks to replace the server farms of the past with private clouds which feature virtualization and integrate with Amazon’s infrastructure.
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