The JabberWookie Library for Jabber is intended to be a complete, extensible, simple to use, Java implementation of the Jabber protocol (aka XMPP). I have personaly used it for both client-server and component-server connections with much success.
Three libraries from SSTR are the only external dependencies.
Keith points to a MSNBC quiz about your Digital IQ. I’ll only admit to scoring over 200.
Despite some earlier server problems, SmoothWall 2.0 has been released this evening – there are also release notes available.
I installed Smoothwall on some older hardware before the 1.0 release, but I have never used it in a “production” kind of way. The hardware requirements are quite low. It allows for some more advanced firewalling, DMZs, and other great stuff. (I found my post about the 1.0 release via google)
At some point a little over a year ago, a nasty fork resulted in a new project called IPCop. At this point both projects look like a good homebrew firewall option. Of course, you might also consider a tweaked OpenBSD box or a commercial solution like Sonicwall.
I saw The Last Samurai tonight. I would give it a solid 4.5 Thauvin-stars. It is easily one of the best movies that I have seen in quite some time. This is one to see in the theatres and own on DVD when it comes out.
On a related note, I hope you’re feeling better, Erik.
InfoSync is excited. The Siemens SX-1 is reportedly ready for a Christmas delivery. Of course, that might mean December 24, or Siemens could back up the release date again.
I would consider this post by Ewan a Good Sign that they are on their way soon.
After spending a few months as a download available only to YDL.net members, Yellow Dog Linux 3.0.1 ISOs are now freely available. The distro now includes HFS+ support and the 2.4.22-based kernel.
Other distros that run on Apple hardware include Debian for PPC, Debian for Motorola 680×0, Gentoo PPC, Mandrake Linux 9.1 PPC, NetBSD PPC, NetBSD 68k. The list is much longer than it was a few years ago.
Rob Pegoraro of the Washington Post reviewed the Motorola MPx200 and was quite impressed. Slated to be published tomorrow, the review praises the low cost of the smartphone and its ability to do a lot, but not too much. It knocked the device for being a little rought around the edges.
The review should be showing up in dead tree version at the front door in a few hours. I’ll check it out.
Thunderbird 0.4 is out.
This Slashdot story that points to an article at HotHardware declares that DVD burners have hit the important $100 barrier. The reviewed model is a DVD+R/DVD+RW AOpen. You still have to spend more (at least $150 after rebates) for something that is DVD+/-everything.
The $100 barrier is an important one. I bought my first CD burner shortly after they hit $100. It was an off brand 2x burner. Yeah, the specs are pathetic a few years later, but at the time it was a big thing for me to be able to back up my data to CDs. My first CD burner still sits in one of my servers, and I use it every few weeks to run backups.
I’ve been telling myself that I would start looking at DVD burners as soon as they reached that $100 mark. Well there they are, though I will probably wait until I can pick up a DVD+/-everything for around $100. I’ve heard that LiteOn and other OEM-style burners can be an excellent deal. It sure beats fronting $250 for a burner that will cost $150 “after rebtates”
According to the Daily Python-URL, Python 2.3.3c1 is out. This release features major bugsquashing, tweaks to xml.processors.expat, and a digest auth fix in urllib2.
I ordered pizza for lunch today over the internet.
That sounds like such a dot-com era thing, but it’s not. It actually got here quicker than if I had phoned it in, and I did not have to deal with the standard “Thank you for calling Papa Johns, please hold” greeting.
Yum.
Ask Bjorn Hansen writes up his experiences with T-Mobile GPRS and OSX. T-Mobile’s naming scheme seems a bit weird. They tend to apply “T-Zones” to many different things in many different contexts. In my part of the US, they don’t even offer any non-T-Zones plans. I pay $10 a month for unlimited T-Zones which includes all of the GPRS that I can use, a couple hundred extra SMS messages, and access to the T-Zones portal.
I wish that T-Mobile would get off their butts and remove the references to Voicestream that I keep running in to. My t-zones homepage was set to wap.myvoicestream.com when I signed up with T-Mobile, though honestly I’m more likely to start out at the t-mobile.co.uk wap page. It has cute little icons whereas the US wap site is just an ugly list of stuff. Of course what T-Mobile really needs to do is start migrating to an XHTML-MP site as the number of devices that are XHTML-MP-aware are rising quickly.
One of the biggest things that scared me about the Fedora Project was the fact that there really was not a company behind it to be “responsible” for it (Of course Red Hat is behind it, but it is not a commercial product). I was worried that security updates would take longer than I would be comefortable with.
The recent rsync vulnerability tested that, and Fedora passes with flying colors. Here are two stories that showed up in my news aggregator back to back this morning from Linux Today: Red Hat Linux Advisory: rsync and Fedora Linux Advisory: rsync.
There you have it folks. The Red Hat and Fedora security advisories and fixes were released at some point yesterday. I’m not going to bother tracking down which one was released first, because it does not really matter. It is true that Red Hat and Fedora were not the first distros to release fixes, but they both released a fix within 24 hours of the vulnerability becoming public. Grab your Fedora rpms or check the post for Red Hat RPMs. Keep those boxes patched. Of course up2date should work quite well also.
I don’t see Red Hat Enterprise Linux RPMs listed in the Linux Today article, but you can grab them from Red Hat’s Errata page.
Ewan posts about a new version of the OPL runtime for Series 60 devices. The OPL Dev Primer on the OPL Wiki is making it much clearer what has to be done to start developing OPL on the PC platform. Expect many cool new things on the wiki in the near future.
There is a new release of NDISwrapper, a GPL’d wrapper for NDIS devices (such as Broadcom Wi-Fi cards) under Linux. It now supports the 2.4 kernel, which means that I’ll be checking it out as soon as possible. The first release only worked with the 2.6 kernel.
Other new features include WEP support, scanning for access points, and lots of bug squashing.
Pontus Fuchs is my hero.
The rsync page has noted that an obscure vulnerability in some rsync installations combined with a vulnerability in the Linux kernel can equal a pretty nasty exploit:
The rsync team has received evidence that a vulnerability in rsync was recently used in combination with a Linux kernel vulnerability to compromise the security of a public rsync server. While the forensic evidence we have is incomplete, we have pieced together the most likely way that this attack was conducted and we are releasing this advisory as a result of our investigations to date.
Newsforge points to more coverage by secunia.com. Thanks for the heads up, Jim.
Steve Olechowski posts an extensive roundup of the major wireless carriers in the US. He lists both positive and negative points for each carrier. I have either direct or indirect experience with all of the carriers on the list, and I must say that his points are extremely accurate. I think he’s being a little too kind to Sprint, but that’s just my personal opinion.
Great roundup, Steve!
LWN notes the release of White Box Enterprise Linux RC2. Please be kind and download it using BitTorrent. I was unable to install WBEL on older/lower end hardware (K6II laptop and my Via platform), but I will see if I can get a WBEL platform running with RC2.
Yum and up2date are now functional. Many other small fixes have made their way in to RC2.
In other Red Hat news, LWN also notes an announcement by Red Hat saying that they will make RHEL available to students and faculty for as little as $25 a year for RHEL Workstation.
UserLinux: Repairing the Economic Paradigm of Enterprise Linux is a whitepaper by Bruce Perens. It outlines both philosophical and technical approaches. It’s really amazing how the Linux landscape has changed so much in so little time.