Tech Observer: Linux And Open Source

Interesting project, just heard that you can run this in a virtualized environment! Looks like a nice test setup, commercial support adds Active Directory...

Untangle delivers an integrated family of applications that help you simplify and consolidate the network and security products you need, in one place at the network gateway. The most popular applications let businesses block spam, spyware, viruses, and phish, filter out inappropriate web content, control unwanted protocols like instant messaging, and provide remote access and support options to their employees. Every downloadable application is pre-configured and guaranteed to work together. [...] The Untangle Gateway Platform provides access to over 30 of the best open source projects (including SpamAssasin, Vipul’s Razor, ClamAV, and OpenVPN), packaged into 14 fully integrated applications that deploy in minutes.

I am looking at digital video and like the looks of the Panasonic HDC-SD9 the price will fluctuate between $600 and $500 dollars.... as I write this it it listed at $509 which is near the lowest I've seen it so far. You'll need a memory card at the same time and the 16Gb appears a good buy : Kingston 16 GB SD4/16GB here is some sample video from the camcorder: hdc-sd9 videos I am looking for DOF addon's for this model and so far haven't turned any up yet.

I recommend these products wholeheartedly! I have two models, the WRT54G and the WRT54GS. I bought the GS on closeout because I checked the serial number and knew how much ram it had. If you can't do that, you'll have to buy a WRT54GL which has the higher ram and flash size. (32 MB ram 8 MB flash) which although not neccessary, give you a lot more room to play.

Once you get it in your hands, upgrade the firmware to DD-WRT my favorite after market firmware.

I order all of my tech gear from Amazon, and they have consistently GREAT pricing on most things. One trick you may not know is if you are shopping for something, place it in your cart, and if there is a price change, it will show up when you view your cart...

Why Python is still relevant, I am reviewing options for studying python, going to provide these links for my friends: But thought I'd post this, have been amazed by how much python has grown in the last three years, really has hit a critical mass.

Google App Engine

Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's infrastructure. [...] App Engine provides a runtime environment that uses the Python programming language.

python Graphic User Interface FAQ

What platform-independent GUI toolkits exist for Python?
Depending on what platform(s) you are aiming at, there are several.

How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python

The goal of this book is to teach you to think like a computer scientist. This
way of thinking combines some of the best features of mathematics, engineering,
and natural science. Like mathematicians, computer scientists use formal languages
to denote ideas (specifically computations). Like engineers, they design
things, assembling components into systems and evaluating tradeoffs among alternatives.
Like scientists, they observe the behavior of complex systems, form
hypotheses, and test predictions.

Dive Into Python Python from novice to pro

Dive Into Python is a Python book for experienced programmers. You can buy a printed copy, read it online, or download it in a variety of formats. It is also available in multiple languages.

OPNET

OPNET uses python for scripting and filters in the ITguru and ACE Analyst programs for network traffic analysis.
ACE™ Analyst and IT Guru Systems Planner™

Companies

• Electric Reliability Council of Texas
• Space Exploration Technologies Corporation

Being able to find a relevant snippet, or code fragment for your project is often the impetus you need to get over a particular feature set., These sites are useful for browsing and searching!

• Code Keep
• Google Code Search
• kelpi
• koders
• krugle
• scripteka
• Snipplr
• TextSnippets
• Tip Cache
• javascript bank

Check it out... major coolness!

Ratproxy is a semi-automated, largely passive web application security audit tool. It is meant to complement active crawlers and manual proxies more commonly used for this task, and is optimized specifically for an accurate and sensitive detection, and automatic annotation, of potential problems and security-relevant design patterns based on the observation of existing, user-initiated traffic in complex web 2.0 environments. The approach taken with ratproxy offers several important advantages over more traditional methods:

* No risk of disruptions.

* Low effort, high yield.

* Preserved control flow of human interaction.

* WYSIWYG data on script behavior.

* Easy process integration.

Is it worth trying out?

There are numerous alternative proxy tools meant to aid security auditors - most notably WebScarab, Paros, Burp, ProxMon, and Pantera. Stick with whatever suits your needs, as long as you get the data you need in the format you like.

Information presentation is vital -- engaging the viewer, presenting the critial info in a useful and concise manner and allowing them to move on are all necessary parts of a Dashboard set up in information technology.

Take a look at:

Open Flash Chart

When the user downloads the web page, Open Flash Chart requests the chart data from the server. The server knows who the user is so it can generate a chart for that particular user showing up to the minute data.

google chart api

The Google Chart API lets you dynamically generate charts. To see the Chart API in action, open up a browser window and copy the following URL into it:
http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?cht=p3&chd=t:60,40&chs=250x100&chl=Hello|World
Press the Enter or Return key and - presto! - you should see the following image:

and the google option which is of course based off of sending your stats to google and they return the chart. Neat huh?

Check Debian File system with fsck for xenserver virtual servers

How To Check a XenServer Host File System
You will need your XenServer Installation CD 1

Alternatively if you want to check a particular partition.
[root@(none)~]# fdisk /dev/sda


Why Zappos Pays New Employees to Quit—And You Should Too

First, some background. As most of you know, Zappos sells shoes—lots of them—over the Internet. The company expects to generate sales of more than $1 billion this year, up from just $70 million five years ago. Part of the reason for Zappos’s meteoric success is that it got the economics and operations right. It offers customers a huge selection—four million pairs of shoes (and other items, such as handbags and apparel) in a warehouse in Kentucky next to a UPS hub. (If Imelda Marcos visited that warehouse she'd likely have a coronary on the spot.) It also offers free delivery and free returns—if you don’t like the shoes, you box them up and send them back to Zappos for no charge.

Yersinia
Came across this, appears a little obscure, take a look!
It works as a network tool designed to take advantage of some weaknesses in different network protocols.
Requires a *nix type environment now to run, as it uses ncurses.

I have been working with freebsd for sometime, I am very interested in this article which goes indepth into the new changes that are made for the new version release:

FreeBSD is back to its incredible performance and now can take advantage of multi-core/CPUs systems very well... so well that some benchmarks on both Intel and AMD systems showed release 7.0 being faster than Linux 2.6 when running PostreSQL or MySQL.