Sysadmin News

Brad Reiss quit his day job as marketing and entertainment director for a restaurant group in Baltimore to make his living in a virtual world called “Second Life.” “It was a good job I was giving up,” Reiss said. “As I was working there, I started to get into Second Life, and I realized the amazing potential. At the point I quit, I wasn’t even close to making enough to survive on. Once I was able to devote a good 40 hours a week, the possibilities opened up.” Reiss, 28, along with some of the world’s most successful companies, see vast potential in Second Life.

Mozilla Corp. will be launching a new security update next week to patch five bugs that were unintentionally introduced in the last update. The five regression bugs were introduced while patching other ones.

Firefox 2.0.0.8 patched ten vulnerabilities, including three critical flaws, but also shipped with five regression bugs — problems unintentionally introduced when code was changed to plug other holes.

“Most users won’t see any difference or experience any problems,” said Mike Beltzner of Mozilla in a posting to the company’s development center blog. “We’re working fast to understand and fix these problems, and will shortly be issuing a 2.0.0.9 update to address them.”

[ Via LinuxWorld ]

Err .. it’s still October and I’m thinking about the holidays. Sometimes I don’t like what Christmas Holiday’s have become. It’s all about the gifts now, no more “just wanna be with you for the holiday’s”. Now it’s something like “What did you get me ? “. Wanna do something for your girl / wife ?  Give her a Santa costume and … a pair of breast implants. And make her look like this :

Now that’s a gift for the both of you, wouldn’t you say ?

Okay, who will answer that question with yes ? Actually I did. I have and old friend of mine that went to San Diego to work as a sysadmin. Coming from my country, Romania, that is something cool since I work as a sysadmin too. It really helps my morale when someone close to me gets to somewhere on his own forces. So, this friend really has been there for about 3 months. But you know how things turn up. In the beginning we talked almost daily, now I barely get a chance to talk to him once in a while. He sent me a while ago some pictures of San Diego so that I may see what he sees everyday. It’s really cool and the thought of visiting him for the holidays crossed my mind. I’ll just have to wait and see if he extends an invitation.

While browsing the net I found myself looking at different stories  about the next line tech gadgets used in cosmetic surgery. And I must say it’s looking pretty good for all the “old people”, or at least old looking. By using the latest cosmetic surgery equipment available, the doctors are making miracles for some. Most used gadgets are laser baser that combine precision with optimal power so the scars will heal really quick and nobody will ever see. Another thing used are facial recognition scanners and softwares that scan, analyze and predict your future look.  Being a multi billion dollar business I bet more of these gadgets will become available.

Virtualization — creating logical pools of IT resources not linked to physical devices — can reduce spending on new server and storage hardware, increase application uptime and simplify IT management. However, your organization will get those benefits only if you follow some key steps. Some users purchase storage virtualization for only one purpose, without realizing the other benefits it can provide them, says Mike Karp, an analyst at Enterprise Management Associates in Boulder, Colo.

SSL uses digital certificates issued by a valid certification authority (CA) to authenticate both parties to the transaction (client and server). If the Web server is set up to require secure connections, it will reject non-secure requests. To connect to a secure page, the client uses https:// at the beginning of the URL instead of http://.

Note:
If some of the components on the page use http:// in their links, visitors will receive a message saying that some items on the page are not secure. You can avoid this by either using https:// for all links or using a relative path that doesn’t contain “http” or “https.”

When the client’s browser initiates a secure connection, the SSL “handshake” occurs. The browser checks the certificate to validate the identity of the server, the validity of the certification authority, and confirm that the certificate hasn’t expired. Then the client and server negotiate the encryption methods and keys to be used.

When the handshake is complete, a new key is created, and this key is used to create session keys which are themselves used to encrypt the rest of the communications, using the encryption method that was negotiated between client and server. The server authenticates the client if the server is configured to require client authentication.

Now when an HTTP GET request is sent, form field responses and program variables that are tagged to the end of the URL are removed from the URL and inserted into the encrypted data block, which also will contain the data entered into the form on the client browser. The response from the server is likewise encrypted when it is returned to the client.

IBM has announced improved storage virtualization offerings for disk and tape, including a new product and enhancements to its Virtualization Engine TS7520 tape solution. The goal in making the changes is to increase the efficiency of its storage virtualization products and bring cost savings to its customers, the Armonk, N.Y., computing giant said. IBM, which has been in the virtualization business for more than 40 years, said it realizes today’s companies want to be able to manage and store information in ways that are “better, cheaper and faster.”