The loss of critical data can prove devastating. Still, millions of professionals ignore backing up their data. While individual reasons vary, one of the most common explanations is that performing routine backups can be a real chore. Good article here by the folks at IBM detailing some good backup solutions.
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Twenty years ago my brother told me how a friend of his was controlling his household appliances with a computer. That seemed incredible then and it seems quite practical now.
Home Automation is anything that your home does for you automatically to make living there more enjoyable or productive. It covers many areas, including remote and timed control of lights and electrical home appliances, distributed media services, and communication. Over the last 10 years, many hardware manufacturers have presented their own proprietary solutions to these problems. Unbeknownst to them, a groundswell of developers from around the world has been providing similar solutions to the free and open source community.
I wonder sometimes just how much I’m contributing negatively to the greening of the planet. There is a really good article over on Treehugger.com about this very subject. Recently it was reported that Red Hat Enterprise Linux was a greener operating system than Microsoft’s Windows 2008 Server. Regardless of your operating sytem, if you’re a geek or a net cruiser, Treehugger will make you feel better.
The most obvious way that electronic equipment can make us greener is by reducing transportation emissions: Videoconferencing, email, audio calls, etc. That should all add up to between 140m and 220m tonnes of CO2 a year in 2020. But the real big improvements are elsewhere: Improving logistics (f.ex. planning better routes for delivery vehicles, managing supply chains better, etc) could save 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2, using data networking to create a “smart” grid could save 2 billion tonnes of CO2, and computer-controlled buildings that can manage lighting and ventilation depending on how many people are inside could save a further 1.7 billion tonnes of CO2.–TreeHugger
How secure is the machine that you’re cruising the internet in? It’s a question few users ask themselves. I came across a free utility that runs from a web browser that will give you some idea of just how secure your own internet connected computer is. All of my ports listed were closed. If you’re running Windows or a Macintosh there might be a port open. Follow this link to check your own PC. Don’t be impatient as it takes about 30-60 seconds to determine the status of your computer.
If you’d like to look at the open ports on your computer and you’d like to delve further into this interesting area I suggest you consider installing Nmap on your computer. If you are a Ubuntu user, you can issue “sudo apt-get install nmap” and Nmap will be installed on your computer. Issuing the command “nmap -A localhost” will give you a relatively quick check on all those ports that are open on your computer. This little knowledge will help provide you with better security and help to make you less susceptible to the gremlins prowling on the Internet. If you are a Macintosh or Microsoft Windows user I suggest you visit Nmap’s website to download the binaries for your operating system.
ASUS’ Eee Monitor today has been captured in official photos that confirm the system to be the company’s direct answer to the iMac. The all-in-one computer confirms earlier teaser photos and reveals a cross between Apple’s Cinema Displays and the iMac, but with two big differences: the use of Linux and just a $500 price tag.
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Here’s a great collection of open source software designed for users of Microsoft Windows. You can download the ISO and burn and distribute copies without cost to students and teachers in your area.
The OpenEducationDisc is a modification of the OpenDisc format by Teachers and Computer Specialists with a passion for education. The purpose of it is to provide students with the software that they need to complete school work at home. Most students don’t have jobs and it is unfair to ask for them or a parent/guardian to buy expensive software to get the best out of their education. Hence everything is free and we encourage you to make copies of this CD and lend it to you friends.
One of India’s states has decided to distribute 100,000 laptops minus Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. They were put off by Microsoft’s bundling and decided to be pro-consumer. What a refreshing approach.
ELCOT says it solicited a bid from Microsoft, proposing to pay $12 for a copy of a Microsoft operating system. However, Microsoft reportedly responded with an offer to sell Windows and Office bundled together at an “academic discount” price of $57. ELCOT says it declined, because, “Any such bundling could result in serious exploitation of the consumer.”
Few in the U.S. computer industry — and fewer in the U.S. computer press — recall that similar bundling behavior with its Internet Explorer browser and Windows 98 operating system resulted in Microsoft being convicted under anti-monopoly laws in 2001, after Clinton-appointed Attorney General Janet Reno brought charges. Many at the time expected the Redmond Giant to be split into multiple units, such as Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, and Slate and other media properties. However, Microsoft was able to negotiate a relatively mild settlement under Bush-appointed Attorney General John Ashcroft.
Common reasons cited for not moving to the open-source operating system include system complexity, lack of in-house IT skills and a shortage of business applications. Both the open-source software community and the vendor world have done a lot to address these shortcomings, and the inroads gained are plain for all to see.
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The Samba Team is proud to announce the release of Samba 3.2, a major new release of the award-winning Free Software file and print server suite for Microsoft Windows clients.
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A couple of weeks ago we upgraded our Lotus Domino server to the latest code from IBM. We’re running Domino 8 on Linux. We’ve been running on Red Hat Linux for nearly four years now and it’s been a good move. We’ve even survived hardware failure a couple of years ago thanks to good backups. We began with Red Hat 2.1 Enterprise and now we’ve moved to Red Hat Enterprise 5. The in place upgrade of the OS took a little over an hour and the upgrade of the Domino code was accomplished in much less time than that. A good friend who works for Erie 1 BOCES accomplished all of that. I merely supplied the Red Hat 5 DVD and he brought the Lotus code.
For the last couple of years I’d been backing up the server using a script that downed the server while the Notes Data directory was backed up with “tar” and then “gzipped.” The tar.gz file was then copied to another directory on the server and then using another script was “rsynced” to another Linux box. We had been keeping day stamped backup files and they were taking up space on the server. This year following the upgrade I decided I wanted to change that and following some research I’ve been able to do just that. On Monday-Friday each week our Domino Server is shutdown for about a half hour while the Notes data directory is backed up. I’ve also changed the script so that the date is appended to each tar file. This tar.gz file is then copied to a backup directory and then after rsync has safely moved it to another Linux server, it is deleted. This move has reclaimed nearly 45 gigabytes of disk space on our Domino server.
My backup server is a Ubuntu box which also functions as our intra-net web server and it’s got plenty of disk space. I’ve decided that I wanted to keep two weeks of backups and so I’m using yet another script which has been added to cron.daily. This script uses the “find” “mtime”, “exec” and “rm” to remove files older than 14 days. This has been a good solution and one that just works. It’s one of the reasons I love Linux and open source.