World: r3wp

Of course, those of us with only one computer must equip ourselves 
with a little common sense to avoid pain. Funny when I watch my friend 
end up trashing all of his machines because he is not similarly equipped.

Strange isn't it?

Most people wouldn't dream of pimping their plumbing or their car.....They 
just know that those things need to work, and messing around with 
them will lead to breakages.
But they'll mess with their only computer day and night.

I'm guilty. But I think below a certain threshold, people tend to 
spend all their available money on the one computer, in order to 
make it as good as possible. That's my reasoning from years ago. 
These days, I feel quite different. I don't feel like playing games 
much anymore and I'm pretty careful installing new software.

Small cute motherboards for your home silent pc :-) http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h905.htm

Apart from that, there is many mini-itx (17x17cm ones) - http://www.mini-itx.com
, http://www.epiacenter.com

Windows bad, Apple good.. http://software.silicon.com/security/0,39024655,39156900,00.htm

  MySQL 5.0 Adds Features for Enterprise Developers and DBAs
by Ken 
  North

Baseball legend Satchel Paige is famous for having said 

Don't look back, something might be gaining on you." Companies selling 
a commercial SQL database management system (DBMS) know its MySQL 
that's gaining on them. With an already large installed base, MySQL 
is set to attract new users because of the feature set of version 
5.0. It includes capabilities for which developers have often turned 
to commercial SQL products.


The purposes for which we use personal, mobile, workgroup, departmental, 
enterprise and web databases are diverse. Application requirements 
are a primary determinant of the capacity and features we need from 
an SQL DBMS. For example, a high-volume transaction processing web 
site places greater demands on a database than a contact list manager 
for laptops and small business servers.


A Web Techniques magazine article, "Web Databases: Fun with Guests 
or Risky Business?" discussed features that characterize an industrial-grade 
SQL DBMS. It explained SQL security and mission-critical databases, 
defined as


    "A database is mission critical if its lack of data integrity has 
    serious consequences, such as causing the loss of customers or even 
    lives."


Maintaining data integrity is implicit -- that's a prime directive 
for a DBMS. The article explained other features that enterprise 
developers look for in an SQL platform:


    ... mission-critical applications require features such as intrinsic 
    security, transaction journaling, concurrency controls and the ability 
    to enforce data integrity constraints. Without those features, you 
    do not have secure, robust databases. Connecting a database to a 
    Web server adds other requirements, such as a multithreaded architecture 
    and the ability to do database backups without taking the server 
    down.


    Freeware and PC DBMSs are suitable for certain classes of applications, 
    but not for high-volume Web sites and mission-critical databases. 
    In any case, don't bet your business, or lives, on such software 
    unless you have the source code and the expertise to understand and 
    repair it.


Since that article appeared in print, improvements to MySQL have 
removed the "not ready for prime time" label. Features described 
in that article are now available to MySQL users:

    * transactions
    * concurrency control, locking, SQL standard isolation levels
    * intrinsic security
    * integrity constraints
    * thread-based memory allocation.

  TII Computer Deals at Dell Home Systems 180x150
	


MySQL uses separate threads to handle TCP/IP and named pipes connections, 
authentication, signaling, alarms and replication. The combination 
of threaded architecture and MySQL clustering provides powerful parallel 
processing capabilities. MySQL can process transactions in parallel 
with separate connections on separate processors using separate threads.
MySQL Milestones


A decade of development has moved MySQL out of the bare-bones DBMS 
category, enlarged its user base, and turned MySQL AB into a profitable 
company. One of the important milestones was integration of the InnoDB 
engine with MySQL 4.0. That upgrade gave MySQL multiple tablespaces, 
tables greater than 4GB and support for transaction processing. Other 
enhancements included OpenGIS spatial data types and hot backups. 
The latter enables a DBA to perform a backup without taking the DBMS 
offline. Hot backup software is available as a commercial add-on 
for databases using the InnoDB storage engine. 


MySQL 5.0, the newest version, is a major milestone. There have been 
enhancements to the tool sets, storage engines, types and metadata. 
 MySQL 5.0 includes features enterprise developers have come to expect 
from commercial SQL products. 

    * capacity for very large databases
    * stored procedures
    * triggers
    * named-updateable views
    * server-side cursors
    * type enhancements
    * standards-compliant metadata (INFORMATION_SCHEMA)
    * XA-style distributed transactions
    * hot backups.


MySQL has a demonstrated capacity for managing very large databases. 
Mytrix, Inc. maintains an extensive collection of Internet statistics 
in a one terabyte (1 TB) data warehouse that contains 20 billion 
rows of data. Sabre Holdings runs the oldest and largest online travel 
reservation system. It replicates 10-60 gigabytes per day from its 
master database to a MySQL server farm. The MySQL databases are used 
to support a shopping application that can accommodate a million 
fare changes per day."

The main architect for Interbase/Firebird, was just lured to the 
mysql camp.

Well, a couple of months ago .. so expect to see Firebird like syntax 
appearing in future versions of mysql.

is this bad news for firebird? I'm sitting here looking at the project 
page, thinking of using it in my next project

No, it's validation of Firebird's approach.

Jim Starkey Sells Netfrastructure to MySQL AB and Moves On

 Today Jim Starkey, who led the original Vulcan fork of Firebird, 
 announced that he has sold his Netfrastructure web software business 
 to MySQL AB and will be taking up a full-time job as a developer 
 for the MySQL company.

Jim won't be a regular code contributor around Firebird any more, 
but he has promised he'll still be around to post the occasional 
"wolf-gram" in Firebird-Architect.

We in the Firebird Project wish Jim all the best for what looks like 
an interesting turn in his career.

His wife continues to work for the Firebird org.

how convenient that the link to the starter guide is dead...

http://www.firebirdsql.org/pdfmanual/Firebird-1.5-QuickStart.pdf
.. works for me.

link is dead here

seems to be a problem in my end

Sorry about the size of that paste above,.. only mean to post the 
last paragraph, and then my connection went down right after..

robotic mule http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGrMMlNjBB8&feature=Views&page=1&t=t&f=b

This is good.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw&feature=Views&page=1&t=t&f=b

:-D That robotic mule is really funny! Amazing and interesting, what's 
possible these days.

Yeah, kind of spooky without a head, though :)

http://www.pyweek.org/

woeps..

Gaining root access to a Mac is 'easy pickings', according to an 
individual who won an OS X hacking challenge last month by gaining 
root control of a machine using an unpublished security vulnerability. 
On February 22, a Sweden-based Mac enthusiast set his Mac Mini as 
a server and invited hackers to break through the computer's security 
and gain root control, which would allow the attacker to take charge 
of the computer and delete files and folders or install applications. 
Within hours of going live, the 'rm-my-mac' competition was over. 
The challenger posted this message on his Web site: "This sucks. 
Six hours later this poor little Mac was owned and this page got 
defaced".

I wonder if unix is more secure or just it is less exposed to hackers 
:-)

Same competition was done for obsd and has not been claimed ever.

The problem imho is not necesarily the OS but how all the apps and 
networking layer on the OS are configured. by default. OBSD is paranoic 
for this so very little is open or install, but as you install things 
like apache, you maybe opening holes for system exploits.

nice ... isn't openbsd or netbsd regarded being one of the most secure 
systems?

Pekr: do u have a URL for that article?

http://www.osnews.com/- go there - there is also discussion and 
the link to the original article ...

openbsd is regarded as the most secured opensource OS. I am shure 
than the NSA has something better. Two of my friends work for them.

Yes Obsd has a very nice qualification scheme..and Im very happy 
with it ;-)

isn't openbsd or netbsd regarded being one of the most secure systems?
 ... I thought MVS (IBM Mainframe OS) has that honour?

MVS is called Z/OS these days.

Hard to hack -- but then not many people wouid have the skills to 
even get started: the concepts are so different to what you'd expect 
from a PC or UNIX background.
But not impossible

That Mac article (from MS-owned ZDnet) has been widely discredited. 
From a follow up article on OSnews:


The ZDnet article, and almost all of the coverage of it, failed to 
mention a very critical point: anyone who wished it was given a local 
account on the machine (which could be accessed via ssh).


Original ZDnet article: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/security/soa/Mac_OS_X_hacked_in_less_than_30_minutes/0,2000061744,39241748,00.htm
Follow up challenge: http://test.doit.wisc.edu/

Well there you go.

.

The story is now finsished http://test.doit.wisc.edu/with a positive 
result...the Mac was not hacked ;-)

I think the testing period was too short

That was a new hack attempt btw...

Today I was just confronted with a 1 minute hack on VMS ;-) ..but 
that was a local account issue too :-) Still is fnu sometimes..

Web 2.0 Baloney by John C. Dvorak: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1931858,00.asp

Dvorak is a web 1.0 dinosaur.

Devorak is a dinosaur.

They said they where worried about the bandwidth. seems that is the 
only thing which can stop a mac. :)

It's Official! Windows XP Boots on Macbook!!!!  http://www.mathcaddy.com/windowsxpbootsonamac%21%21%21%211/

that is pretty cool.

I thought that you want the opposite - to run OS-X on general x86 
hw, no? :-)

what is so special on Mac x86 machine to run WinXP on it? It just 
does not make sense ...