Planet TriLUG

Warren Myers: from `fortune`

antipaucity — 2010-03-10T12:20:27+00:00

The five rules of Socialism:
(1) Don’t think.
(2) If you do think, don’t speak.
(3) If you think and speak, don’t write.
(4) If you think, speak and write, don’t sign.
(5) If you think, speak, write and sign, don’t be surprised.
– being told in Poland, 1987

Mark Turner: Cheap Thoughts: Kitchen timers

Mark Turner — 2010-03-09T23:13:58+00:00

Why don’t kitchen timers count up as well as down? Isn’t that a valid use of a timer? What if I’m eyeballing something on the stove and I just want to know how long it’s been cooking. My only choice is to set the timer to some random time and do the math to figure out the time.

I would think it’d be a simple thing to make timers that count both ways. Maybe it’s just me.

Tarus Balog: Upcoming OpenNMS Events

tarus — 2010-03-09T20:01:32+00:00

Lots of events going on in OpenNMS-land. I thought I’d list a few here:

Early bird registration for the OpenNMS Users Conference to be held in Frankfurt, Germany on May 6th and 7th ends tomorrow. This is the place to be to hear all about OpenNMS, and early registration can save attendees €60.
Next week I’ll be at the Computerworld Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco. Drop me a note if you are going and want to meet up.
On April 10th, Jeff Gehlbach will be speaking at the Texas Linux Fest 2010 on using OpenNMS in enterprise environments. If you have seen any of his OpenNMS and Asterisk presentations in the past, you know how good they are and won’t want to miss this one.
We once again have training scheduled in metropolitan Pittsboro, NC, USA for the week of the 19th of April. These classes are both a lot of fun and the best way to get started with OpenNMS.
David Hustace, Craig Gallen and myself will be attending the TeleManagement Forum’s ManagementWorld conference in Nice, France, on 18-20 May. Again, if you use or are interested in OpenNMS and you’ll be at the conference, please let us know. We’d love to meet you.
And finally, The OpenNMS Group is a platinum sponsor of the Southeastern Linuxfest to be held in South Carolina the weekend of June 12th. Since this is close expect a lot of the OpenNMS crew to be there, and I’ve submitted a couple of talks but haven’t heard back if they have been accepted.

Of course, I’m able to talk, in depth and at length, about OpenNMS pretty much anywhere and anytime (grin). Hope to meet you in person soon.

Tarus Balog: OpenNMS in Botswana

tarus — 2010-03-09T18:13:37+00:00

Just a quick post that pictures from Craig Gallen’s trip to Botswana are now available. He told me he had a great time, and perhaps I can visit one day.

Jesse Morgan: Complex ACLs in Apache Locations

morgajel — 2010-03-09T14:15:22+00:00

So the problem I’m having is with limiting LDAP users access to WebDAV directories; specifically, how do I keep devs from committing to the release branch. The setup is each of the large Projects (Project1, Project2) has a trunk and release branch; however some pesky devs try to ninja changes into the release branch, circumventing the entire process. That’s bad. The access should go like this (note this is a subset of the mess I’m dealing with):

Everyone can read and write all projects under / (/Project1, /Project2) EXCEPT:
1. Only a certain team of devs (and I) can write to /Project1/trunk.
2. Only a certain team of qa can write to /Project1/branches/release.

Specifically, I should be able to commit to trunk but not release, however that doesn’t seem to be the case. Here’s an abbreviated version of my vhost:

<VirtualHost 10.0.0.5:443>
 blah blah blah snip...
<Location />
     DAV svn
     SVNParentPath /var/svn/
     SVNPathAuthz off
     AuthName  "SVN Access"
     AuthType  Basic
     AuthLDAPUrl     "ldap://ldap.example.int:389/ou=Users,dc=example,dc=int?uid"
     AuthBasicProvider ldap
     AuthzLDAPAuthoritative off
     AuthLDAPGroupAttribute   "memberUid"
     <LimitExcept none>
         Require valid-user
     </LimitExcept>
 </Location>

 <Location /Project1/trunk>
     # Everyone can read, but only devs (and I) can change.
     <LimitExcept REPORT GET OPTIONS PROPFIND>
         Require ldap-group cn=devs,ou=Groups,dc=example,dc=int
         Require ldap-user morgajel
         Satisfy any
    </LimitExcept>

 </Location>

 <Location /Project1/branches/release>
    # Everyone can read, but only QA can change.
    <LimitExcept REPORT GET OPTIONS PROPFIND>
        Require ldap-group cn=qa,ou=Groups,dc=example,dc=int
        Satisfy any
    </LimitExcept>
 </Location>

</VirtualHost>

Any thoughts as to why I’m still able to write to release? and no, I’m not in the QA group; I suspect it has something to do with the Locations essentially being nested. Since we’re managing users and groups with LDAP, simple SVN ACLs won’t work, and I’m not really sure how to accomplish what I need to do.

Thoughts?

Side note: REPORT GET OPTIONS PROPFIND are the only methods needed for read-only svn webdav access. Fun fact, huh?

UPDATE:

I was overthinking the situation- Apache config is not programming. There is no inheritance between locations. There is no nesting. Once you create a new location, you need to set up perms for that, so setting the base / with read/write for everyone, I then define sublocations

Everyone can read and write all projects under / (/Project1, /Project2) EXCEPT:
1. Only a certain team of devs (and I) can write to /Project1/trunk.
2. Only a certain team of qa can write to /Project1/branches/release.

Specifically, I should be able to commit to trunk but not release, however that doesn’t seem to be the case. Here’s an abbreviated version of my vhost:

<VirtualHost 10.0.0.5:443>
 blah blah blah snip...
<Location />
     DAV svn
     SVNParentPath /var/svn/
     SVNPathAuthz off
     AuthName  "SVN Access"
     AuthType  Basic
     AuthLDAPUrl     "ldap://ldap.example.int:389/ou=Users,dc=example,dc=int?uid"
     AuthBasicProvider ldap
     AuthzLDAPAuthoritative off
     AuthLDAPGroupAttribute   "memberUid"
     <LimitExcept none>
         Require valid-user
     </LimitExcept>
 </Location>

 <Location /Project1/trunk>
     # Everyone can read, but only devs (and I) can change.
     <LimitExcept REPORT GET OPTIONS PROPFIND>
         Require ldap-group cn=devs,ou=Groups,dc=example,dc=int
         Require ldap-user morgajel
         Satisfy any
    </LimitExcept>

 </Location>

 <Location /Project1/branches/release>
    # Everyone can read, but only QA can change.
    <LimitExcept REPORT GET OPTIONS PROPFIND>
        Require ldap-group cn=qa,ou=Groups,dc=example,dc=int
        Satisfy any
    </LimitExcept>
 </Location>

</VirtualHost>

Thoughts?

Side note: REPORT GET OPTIONS PROPFIND are the only methods needed for read-only svn webdav access. Fun fact, huh?

UPDATE:

 <Location /Project1/trunk>
    # If you want to write to trunk, you need to be one of the required people. You can still read it.
    <LimitExcept PROPFIND OPTIONS GET REPORT>
         Require ldap-group cn=devs,ou=People,ou=Groups,dc=mrm,dc=int
    </LimitExcept>
    <Limit PROPFIND OPTIONS GET REPORT>
         Require valid-user
    </Limit>
 </Location>

 <Location /Project1/branches/release>
    # Everyone can read, but only QA can change.
    <LimitExcept REPORT GET OPTIONS PROPFIND>
        Require ldap-group cn=qa,ou=Groups,dc=example,dc=int
        Satisfy any
    </LimitExcept>
    <Limit PROPFIND OPTIONS GET REPORT>
         Require valid-user
    </Limit>
 </Location>

What I was missing was the second half of the limits, thinking it would inherit from /. It doesn’t. Without that require valid-user, it was allowing unauthenticated users to read the files (which was no good). Life is good (until I find out where this is broken).

Tanner Lovelace: My wife on (Internet) TV

lovelace — 2010-03-08T15:51:10+00:00

They misspelled my wife’s name (there’s no “e” on the end), but otherwise this is pretty cool! My wife Janell has been volunteering recently as a docent at Duke Chapel giving tours and one day recently after she had given a tour a camera crew showed up! They were making a video for Raycom Sports to show before the Duke vs MD basketball game. She took them all through Duke Chapel and even got permission to take them to the top of the Duke Chapel tower! Anyway, here’s the video.

(And here’s a direct link in case the embedded video doesn’t show up: ACC Road Trip Video: Duke vs MD part 1.)

Posted via web from Clubjuggler

Mark Hinkle: Tech Coverage, Twitter and the Top 8 Business Pubs

Mark — 2010-03-08T06:10:07+00:00

I work for a start-up and like the folks at virtually every start-up we dream of being covered by one of the Big 8 business publications: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, BusinessWeek, The Economist, the Financial Times, and USA Today.

The folks at ITDatabase took a closer look at how they cover the tech industry and surveyed a group of veterans from major tech PR agencies to see what their experiences were like. The resulting report yielded a few interesting tidbits:

The New York Times’ David Pogue (@Pogue) and Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) top the most followed tech journalists on Twitter while NY Times’ Motoko Rich and Bit blogger Jenna Wortham get retweeted much more often (500 and 331 times per post on average respectively).
According to the tech PR veterans surveyed, 46.4% thought that that business press tech coverage is worse than it was five years ago. Only 25% thought it was better.
Business success is not an indicator of press coverage see how Twitter and Facebook rule the total number of clippings along with Google, Apple and Microsoft.

Intriguing research if you are interested in tech PR.

Mark Turner: Let them

Mark Turner — 2010-03-08T03:31:45+00:00

The Friday before last I drove to work in the midst of drivers acting like idiots. It inspired me to wonder how the Dalai Lama might treat the idiots in traffic, if he would be as tempted as I am sometimes to show them the error of their ways. It falls into my general deep philosophical thinking that we’re all on the planet to teach and help each other: we can all be angels to someone.

I posted my thought and then went about my way, thinking that was the end of it.

Then on Thursday, a close friend died after a traffic accident on that very same highway. As I again drove by the scene of that horrific accident, I was startled to have a thought pop into my head:

Let them, it said.

I was astonished, as I wasn’t really expecting an answer to my question. It had been just a silly question I had and then had forgotten about. Nor was it the answer I expected. This was most definitely the answer, though.

Let them. These two words were a profound epiphany.

If someone’s making a mistake, let them make it. Failure is a better teacher than success. How can someone learn when someone else is always bailing them out? Let these misguided individuals choose their behavior and learn their own lessons from it. I don’t have to correct them because sooner or later they will correct themselves.

I realized I gained nothing by letting idiot drivers bother me, and I realized that it applies to almost everything. The balance of karma rules the day. Each of us is both the student and the teacher. One day these people will see themselves through the eyes of those they’ve affected and then their mistakes will be made crystal-clear. I can’t possibly teach anyone better than they can teach themselves. What it boils down to is that the only life I can be responsible for is my own.

I smiled at this thought, and was extra-courteous for the rest of my drive home.

Mark Turner: Instant Karma

Mark Turner — 2010-03-08T01:42:38+00:00

Instant Karma
John Lennon

Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you right on the head
You better get yourself together
Pretty soon you’re gonna be dead
What in the world you thinking of
Laughing in the face of love
What on earth you tryin’ to do
It’s up to you, yeah you

Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna look you right in the face
Better get yourself together darlin’
Join the human race
How in the world you gonna see
Laughin’ at fools like me
Who on earth d’you think you are
A super star
Well, right you are

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Ev’ryone come on

Instant Karma’s gonna get you
Gonna knock you off your feet
Better recognize your brothers
Ev’ryone you meet
Why in the world are we here
Surely not to live in pain and fear
Why on earth are you there
When you’re ev’rywhere
Come and get your share

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
Come on and on and on on on
Yeah yeah, alright, uh huh, ah

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
On and on and on on and on

Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Well we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun
Yeah we all shine on
Like the moon and the stars and the sun

Mark Turner: A little downtime

Mark Turner — 2010-03-06T03:25:17+00:00

Yes, I actually posted that last post at 3:13 AM this morning. It was another night like Monday night, where my sense of shock and grief kept sleep at bay. Still, when the alarm clock sounded I managed to put my feet on the floor in the morning, for which I am always thankful.

It was my toughest day so far in dealing with the loss of Gerry. Up until now there has been plenty for me to do to create something positive for Gerry and his family but now that he’s gone the emotion my activities have been (mostly) keeping in check are now coming forth. On my way to work I teared up again when I saw a state trooper and wondered if he might have been at the scene of Gerry’s wreck. Then later this morning I had to stop reading Gerry’s guestbook because I became too emotional. I also got weepy thinking of all the missed opportunities for future fun together, and that from this point on our lives would be forever out of sync.

I thought of how he and I had become fathers within eight days of each other. We had shared our clumsy fumblings through this profound, bewildering rite of passage known as fatherhood. What a comfort it was knowing we were going through it at about the same time.

For a time today I actually felt guilty for my grief, too. How can I be so stricken when I didn’t even know him as well as so many others? When I wasn’t his wife, kids, parents, brothers, in-laws, and other family? I finally worked through that one, but if I can be this moved I can’t even imagine how hard this must be on his family.

All of this weighed on my mind, leaving me sullen and quiet and often staring into space or down at my specially-adorned socked-and-sandaled feet. Not even a coworker’s going away lunch could pull me out of that quiet hiding place into which I had retreated.

Yes, today has been the toughest day yet for me. I’m acknowledging the pain and its depth is surprising. As a friend commented, a death like Gerry’s takes a piece of your heart. You go on living but the wound never heals.

I will go on but the going isn’t nearly as fun as it was less than a week ago.

Mark Turner: Blizzard of ‘77

Mark Turner — 2010-03-05T08:13:58+00:00

Blizzard of ‘77
Nada Surf

In blizzard of ‘77
The cars were just lumps on the snow
And then later
Tripping in 7-11
The shelves were stretching out of control
On a plane ride
The more it shakes
The more i have to let go
Now the signals
Still getting all mixed up
We’re always doing damage control

But in the middle of the night i worry
It’s blurry even without light

I know i have got a negative edge
That’s why i sharpen all the others a lot
It’s like flowers or ladybugs
Pretty weeds or red beetles with dots

But in the middle of the night i worry
It’s blurry even without light

I miss you more than i knew
I miss you more than i knew
I miss you more than i knew

Mark Turner: Last day with Gerry

Mark Turner — 2010-03-05T05:04:49+00:00

I was at work when Kelly called me at 10 AM. Gerry’s status hadn’t improved and had actually worsened overnight. He was no longer breathing on his own and there was absolutely no sign of brain activity. The family was talking of making final preparations, Kelly said, and if I wanted a chance to say goodbye while he was still being kept alive I needed to go immediately. I dashed off a note to my manager before rushing out the door, frantically calling up Jeff and Scott as I went.

Unlike my Monday afternoon trip to Duke Hospital, when I got lost driving around Durham, this time I took the Durham Freeway straight there. I walked up to the hallway outside his ICU to find some of his friends already there, many of them already in tears.

Within minutes the hallway was full of Gerry’s friends, to the point where we were all impeding the others in the hospital. Many hugs were exchanged, old friends were reunited, and stories of Gerry filled the air. There was no sign of the family as they were spending time alone in Gerry’s room. I got there before Kelly and followed Jacob into the room along with Jeff, Suzie, Scott, Erin, Marco, and Ann.

Gerry was lying in a darkened room, surrounded by panels showing a pulse but little else. An “apnea” warning flashed on a monitor. There were family pictures on the wall and two autographed hockey pucks in his hand, put there by his teammates. His body had swelled from his injuries and his head was no longer secured in a HALO. A large scar ran from his mouth up beyond his right ear. I thought the Duke surgeons had done a fantastic job fixing him up, if only his head and neck injuries weren’t so severe. Still I could tell that only his body was here, not his spirit.

We all became emotional upon seeing him. A few of us lingered to privately share our thoughts with him. Jacob reminded us that we couldn’t hurt him so we were free to touch him. Many of us put our hands on his.

After one group exited another group would go in. This parade went on all morning, with the crowd growing so large that we were soon shuttled into a nearby conference room. I was happy to see many friends I hadn’t seen in a long while, even though the circumstances could’ve been better. Western Wake Fire Rescue – the crew who pulled Gerry out of his car – showed up to see him and the family. It was touching.

A group of local pastors, including one who claimed to be a “king from Ghana”, came in to pray over Gerry. Hey, at that point anything was worth a try. I discovered later that Ghana is a parliamentary democracy and doesn’t recognize monarchs. I think they were sincere in their efforts, though. Gerry would’ve been so amused.

Another meeting was soon to be taking place in the conference room, and with everyone having had their chance to say goodbye to Gerry some of us began making lunch plans. A group including Scott, Erin, me, Kelly, Suzie, Bill, Janet, Joe, Ann, and Marco headed over to Parizade over on Main Street. When the waiter asked for our drink orders, someone ordered a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (one of Gerry’s favorite beers) and soon seven of us had one! We spent our meal enjoying excellent food, beer, company, and stories of our friend Gerry. I laughed harder than I have in a long time. It was so therapeutic!

I glanced somberly at my watch at 2 PM, knowing that before we finished eating Gerry’s life would be officially over. I quietly lifted my beer in a silent toast, not wanting to spoil the happy mood that had once again come over us.

We left the restaurant and headed home, Kelly and I in the separate cars we had driven to the hospital. I picked up Travis from Paul and Laura’s house while Kelly fetched Hallie. It was at this point when we got the word that Gerry was gone, having been declared dead at 2:50 PM. I rushed to put together a fitting notification and then send it to three different sites and wound up flubbing one version.

Also during that time I received an email from a reporter at WTVD, looking to talk with people who knew Gerry. I called up Bill, Janet, Jeff, and Scott, but only Scott could make it in time. He met me at Hallie’s soccer practice where several minutes later the news team arrived. He and I both spoke about our love for Gerry and finished our interviews as the park was getting dark. The resulting story was the lead on WTVD’s 11 o’clock news and reporter Alina Machado did an excellent job with it. I teared up again when I saw it. Immediately after it ran, I got a call from Mandy, expressing thanks for our touching tribute. I was so happy that she was happy with it.

Now I’m writing all of this up and ignoring how I’m spent both physically and emotionally. Everyone else feels the same way, but as hard as it’s been at least today there is some closure. It’s time to rest a bit, pay our respects, and live life the way Gerry would want us to live.

Mark Hinkle: Xen Hypervisor Monitoring with Open Source Zenoss Core

Mark — 2010-03-05T04:41:06+00:00

Zenoss Core Dashboard

This week I am very excited because we released Zenoss Core 2.5.2 with a cool new feature, Xen hypervisor monitoring.

I am very happy to see Zenoss put this out as open source software, because it’s the beginning of what could be a great piece of software. Now that this is out there for anyone to use I expect to get lots of feedback to extend and improve it.

This extension to Zenoss Core discovers guests on Xen para-virtualized hosts and provides monitoring of performance and availability via SSH. While the Xen hosts run on physical servers, the virtual guests are listed per host and linked back to any discovered instances on the network. Admins can quickly find the associated hosts and guests and monitor their Xen virtual infrastructure along side their entire physical, virtual, and cloud-based IT environment through a single interface.

I really think this is the beginning of a lot of virtualization and cloud monitoring capabilities from Zenoss Core. In recent weeks we got a couple neat extensions for virtualization and cloud monitoring including Amazon Web Services, Google App Engine, libvirt (a virtualization library favored by Red Hat) and Ganglia integration.

Technorati Tags: Hypervisor, Monitoring, Xen, Zenoss Core

Mark Turner: Gerry’s gone

Mark Turner — 2010-03-05T00:28:21+00:00

Gerry died this afternoon before 3 PM. More when I get a chance to catch my breath. It’s been a long day.

Tarus Balog: Linux Link Tech Show Available for Download

tarus — 2010-03-04T15:37:32+00:00

Last night I had a lot of fun chatting with the Linux Link Tech Show guys. It is episode #343 and it is available for download.

I love any forum where I can run my mouth for an hour and a half talking about OpenNMS and open source software, and I can’t wait to meet these guys in person at SELF (where we are a diamond sponsor).

Note that it is subtitled “linux talk. unfiltered” and I do use the occasional profanity. The spirit took me toward the end and I did drop one “f-bomb” so if you are sensitive to such things you should probably avoid this podcast.

Mark Turner: Remembering the good times

Mark Turner — 2010-03-04T13:47:27+00:00

Beer Night

Gerry’s “Beer Night” drinking buddies, Jeff, Scott, and myself, decided to get together last night for beers and to talk about Gerry. His good friends Bill Ramsay and Janet Mobley joined us at the North Hills Fox and Hound. We were only together for less than two hours but there was a lot of laughter and stories shared.

It was the best therapy I could’ve asked for during this difficult time. Gerry had a knack for collected some pretty cool friends.

Mark Turner: Sinking in

Mark Turner — 2010-03-04T04:32:55+00:00

I’ve reached that point now, the one where the reality is beginning to sink in that the Gerry that I knew is gone. Up until now I’ve put up a good front and kept up with the gallows humor but the truth I’ve known all along but refused to acknowledge is finally being accepted. Gerry was gone the second that truck smashed into his car and he isn’t coming back.

Some folks at the office are aware of my loss and many have stopped by my desk to inquire about him. I’ve been giving somber replies but have usually thrown in something positive to lessen the stark reality. I used to think it was for their benefit but it was really for mine. No use pretending anymore.

My manager wanted to talk with me today after hearing the talk in the office and so I told him the whole story. Today was the first time my show of strength failed me, that I could no longer hide the pain. Describing to my boss how Gerry had chance to dodge the truck barreling down on him, I lost my composure and began to cry.

Fuck. I’m crying now as I write this.

My dad noted today how this is the first friend I have lost suddenly. He is right, and I now see how amazingly blessed I have been in that regard. Up until now almost all of my peeps have lived happy lives. Gerry, though, was in my inner circle, one of my closest friends. His sudden departure is stunning and hurts as if I have lost a brother. The sense of emptiness I felt on Monday was like nothing I have ever felt. Nothing could’ve prepared myself for this.

Still, what can be done now? Life goes on. Nothing can change what happened. Gerry’s huge circle of friends will help his family cope. And each of us will continue to live our lives because we each have to move on. For now I’ll draw my loved ones in a little closer and never, ever let them doubt how much I love them.

Tanner Lovelace: Porsche 918 Spyder Hybrid Concept gets 78 mpg

lovelace — 2010-03-03T20:17:55+00:00

via youtube.com

At 78 miles per gallon and a top speed of 189 miles per hour, this looks very nice. (even though I’ll never be able to afford one!)

Posted via web from Clubjuggler

Mark Turner: Holding out for a miracle

Mark Turner — 2010-03-03T03:31:18+00:00

I didn’t sleep very well last night. Nor did Kelly. Nor did Gerry’s family nor the hundreds of friends that knew him. I couldn’t stop thinking how quickly things happened. In the blink of an eye my friend went from a happy, healthy life to tragedy. It is the dream I can’t wake up from.

I was feeling pretty glum today about his status. Several of my coworkers came by to ask me about him and express their sympathy. I appreciated that but I stayed in a funk all day. It wasn’t until I spoke with Kelly around 11 that I gently began to feel better. That’s when she mentioned that Gerry’s gag reflex had returned. It’s such a simple thing, a grain of good news next to a mountain of bad, but it provided me a glimmer of hope.

I’m not fooling myself into thinking that it Gerry’s prognosis is anything but grim. It will take nothing short of a miracle to heal Gerry, an honest to God miracle. But miracles do happen. All the time.

We’re not privy to the script in life’s play. None of us know when we’ll play our last scene, or how the play will end. We just play our roles and pine for the time when we can once again join our fellow actors backstage. And I look forward to kicking Gerry’s ass someday for putting us through this, here or elsewhere!

Chess Griffin: Blog > /dev/null

Chess Griffin — 2010-03-02T23:21:26+00:00

This is just a quick insert into the XML feed to let subscribers know that I have decided to take down my blog. It had been almost 6 months since I last posted, and I did not see myself posting anytime soon. I will keep this post and this feed going for a few weeks, but then I'm going to take the feed down, so you may want to go ahead and remove it from your RSS readers.

I hope you and yours are doing fine. Feel free to send me an email or run me down in IRC to say hi. :-)

Catch ya around the Interweb...

Tarus Balog: The Tail of the Dragon

tarus — 2010-03-02T19:59:41+00:00

One of my favorite business books is Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm. Perhaps it is time to order the follow up book, Inside the Tornado.

Lately, working at OpenNMS has been like holding on to the tail of a dragon. Moore uses the tornado analogy, but I think I understand now what he means. Since last fall we’ve added five people, and each time we add more resources, we end up with more business and more work. It’s crazy. It’s fun.

It’s a little scary.

But what really excites me is that we are finally getting some traction in positioning OpenNMS as a replacement for tools such as OpenView and Tivoli. Our guy in the UK, Dr. Craig Gallen, gave a presentation today in Dubai on the work we’ve done with the TeleManagement Forum to bring open source development and ideals to the world’s largest telecommunication companies and vendors, so it was appropriate that today we also found out that we have been nominated for the TMForum Excellence Awards in the Leadership category.

The award will go to “the member company demonstrating leadership, dedication and commitment to the Forum’s industry collaboration activities, and overall progress in the industry” and while I hope we win, just being nominated is a win for open source.

If any of my three readers will be in Nice at the TMForum conference this May, be sure to let me know.

Tarus Balog: New Order of the Green Polo Members

tarus — 2010-03-02T19:10:04+00:00

OpenNMS has survived and grown mainly through the support of its community. The core of that community is represented by an organization called “The Order of the Green Polo” (OGP) and it is the governing body of the OpenNMS project.

Membership must be earned, and current members are responsible for voting in new members. In fact, there are a number of OpenNMS Group employees who are not members of the OGP – while I tend to hire out of that group it is not something I always do, and membership must be earned regardless of where you work.

It is with great pleasure that I am able to announce today two new members of the OGP. They both hail from Germany, and they, along with Alex Finger (already a member) are responsible for the upcoming OpenNMS book.

I am constantly humbled by what our community is able to accomplish. We had been talking about an OpenNMS book for years, but it took three guys in Germany to actually make it a reality (well, at least real enough to pre-order).

Klaus Thielking-Riechert has been involved with OpenNMS since the spring of 2008 and is a regular contributor to the discussion lists. He and his wife are also fine hosts and have great taste in beer.

Ronny Trommer works for our partner in Germany, Nethinks, and while also involved in the book he has done a lot of work on the code as well. He gave us the idea for integrating with JasperReports. Here is a “morning” outage report he created (click for a larger image):

We have now formally integrated it into OpenNMS and it will be included in the next release, along with a large number of “canned” reports.

In an environment where the role of community in open source is being questioned, I am both excited and humbled to see ours doing so well. Come meet us at the OpenNMS Users Conference (early-bird registration ending soon).

Mark Turner: Gerry Reid website

Mark Turner — 2010-03-02T17:10:08+00:00

I’ve setup a separate website for Gerry Reid’s updates and information. You can visit it here.

Feel free to post your comments and/or stories as well.

Tarus Balog: The Open Core Functionality Ceiling

tarus — 2010-03-02T13:11:37+00:00

Jack Hughes has a great post on The Tech Teapot today. He has been examining the effects of an “open core” licensing model on open source communities, and he hypothesized a “functionality ceiling” in such projects as the feature needs of the pay or commercial version outweigh those of the free or community edition.

Using Ohloh he was able to examine graphs of the code for two well-known open core projects. Both of them show a large plateau, seeming to demonstrate his point.

So I decided to look at the OpenNMS graph. It’s considerably different.

This is pretty cool. You can see a bump when I took over the project in 2002, but due to my limited Java skills it doesn’t grow much until 2004 when Matt Brozowski joined the project. After that the growth is pretty phenomenal. We do have a slight plateau as we are preparing for our next stable release, but nothing like the 18+ month long ones for the other projects, and the size of our code base is much, much larger.

Great idea, Jack.

Jason Evans: Liberals, Atheists Are Smarter Than Conservatives

jsevans — 2010-03-02T11:28:53+00:00

HT to bigjournalism.com

Liberalism, atheism, male sexual exclusivity linked to IQ

Evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa at the the London School of Economics and Political Science correlated data on these behaviors with IQ from a large national U.S. sample and found that, on average, people who identified as liberal and atheist had higher IQs. This applied also to sexual exclusivity in men, but not in women. The findings will be published in the March 2010 issue of Social Psychology Quarterly.

The IQ differences, while statistically significant, are not stunning — on the order of 6 to 11 points — and the data should not be used to stereotype or make assumptions about people, experts say. But they show how certain patterns of identifying with particular ideologies develop, and how some people’s behaviors come to be.

The reasoning is that sexual exclusivity in men, liberalism and atheism all go against what would be expected given humans’ evolutionary past. In other words, none of these traits would have benefited our early human ancestors, but higher intelligence may be associated with them.

Well, what can you say? I mean, my first gut reaction is to spew out about how liberal “intellectuals” say that there is no series debate among climate professionals about man made global warming, well at least until climate-gate hit. The fact is that statistics can be twisted to say anything at all and this is the worst kind of slander. This is like saying that a new study finds Jews more likely to be thrifty with their money and that Africans are less intelligent than Asians. All of the above examples are lies that I just pulled out of my ass, but if I get a get a grant to prove Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck” jokes are based in fact, then I can be an intellectual.

This report is hateful. However, being a good libertarian I don’t want to see it banned, I just want to see real debate and not just finger pointing and laughing at the stupidity of religious folks.

Mark Turner: My friend Gerry Reid severely injured

Mark Turner — 2010-03-02T03:41:32+00:00

Gerry Reid

My close friend Gerry Reid was severely injured this morning in a terrible car accident on I-40 today. Gerry had stopped in traffic and got rear-ended by a tractor-trailer. He was flown to Duke Hospital where he was in surgery all day.

Gerry’s in critical condition. He has been severely injured, with serious neck and head injuries. The next 24-48 hours will be critical for him. He has swelling in his brain and is unresponsive. Doctors will perform more tests in the morning to see how he’s doing.

My friend is in a fight for his life. Please keep him and his family in your prayers.

Mark Turner: Where does the weekend go?

Mark Turner — 2010-03-01T03:13:02+00:00

I had a fun weekend around the home. Saturday was spent going to and from the kids’ basketball games. Today was spent going to and from the circus. A great time was had by all. And the weather cooperated a bit, being dry and in the mid to upper 50s.

I’m sorry to see the weekend go. Tomorrow it’s back to the daily grind.

Tarus Balog: Earthquake in Chile

tarus — 2010-02-28T16:26:37+00:00

One of the major things I love about OpenNMS is its worldwide scope. Last fall we had two students, Javier and Cristian, attend our training course in Pittsboro. They work for Telmex in Chile, and the office is just outside of Santiago.

When I heard about the magnitude 8.8 quake, my first thought was to hope that they were okay. I did get an e-mail from them and they are fine, although Cristian writes “I am hoping the earth stops moving … it is a worrying feeling all day long to feel the floor moving and not knowing when it will come.”

Our best thoughts go out to everyone affected by this earthquake, as well as our hopes for a speedy recovery.

Mark Turner: 876-561-5492 and 876-559-3893

Mark Turner — 2010-02-27T21:16:14+00:00

I got two mystery calls to my mobile phone today, one from 876-561-5492 and another from 876-559-3893. I didn’t answer either one, but I suppose that’s not the point of the calls. The point is for me to see that I missed the calls and attempt to call them back!

You see, the 876 area code isn’t an American area code, but a Jamaican one. Calls to Jamaica, even with my dirt-cheap VoIP calling plan, are $0.26 per minute! So some unsuspecting person sees that they missed a call from an 876 number, calls it back, and gets strung along during the call, thinking that they’re paying domestic rates while all along they’re paying through the teeth for the call.

AT&T has a nice page that discusses 876 area code calls. Read it and take its advice: don’t call back numbers you don’t know.

Scott Schulz: Congrats to the Brother

swschulz — 2010-02-27T14:33:55+00:00

Congratulations go out to my brother who was named national Technician of the Year by the E9-1-1 Institute.

More information appears in this story on the WRAL website.

Love the quote: “Through his leadership, the emergency communications IT team and the communications-electronics maintenance shop have made great strides toward enhancing the reliability and affordability of a wide variety of technology,” Furey said.

Now I’ll probably need an appointment to talk to him on IRC.

Tarus Balog: Open Source and Building Networks

tarus — 2010-02-27T06:16:51+00:00

Geoff Davis, a friend of mine from high school who now works at Google, wrote a post about how open source software projects can be used to build up a social network.

I sometimes get jealous of college kids today. When I was in school, computer networking was pretty much limited to BBSs and 2400 baud modems (although the college did have Internet access). I wonder what would have happened to me if open source had be prevalent in those days. All the time I spent drinking beer could have been turned into something more productive. (grin)

As Geoff points out, not only does working on open source projects give you something to put on your resumé, it allows you to make the connections to get that job in the first place.

Tarus Balog: The Linux Link Tech Show

tarus — 2010-02-26T19:57:41+00:00

Okay, I’m scared. I was recently invited to participate on The Linux Link Tech Show (check it out on Wednesday, 3 March). I said, sure, but that was before I actually listened to an episode. It’s pretty wide open.

At least I should be able to deal with the format, since each show is over 2+ hours long. I once applied to participate in a 5 minute lightening talk and the guys at the office just laughed, saying that it takes me more than 5 minutes to say my name.

Also, there doesn’t seem to be many limitations on language. I got bleeped on FLOSS for a rather minor vulgarity, so it will be interesting to see if I can keep it clean.

Anyway, if you have a couple of hours to kill next Wednesday, check it out.

Mark Turner: SeaWorld whale trainer’s last moments

Mark Turner — 2010-02-26T18:16:58+00:00

New Hampshire tourist Todd Connell captured the moments leading up to the death of SeaWorld whale trainer Dawn Brancheau (note: the actual attack is not shown). If you skip forward to the last 20 seconds you can see Brancheau lying down next to the whale, Tilikum: apparently a breach of protocol with a whale that was already responsible for two deaths.

Maybe wild animals should remain in the wild?

Mark Turner: N&O forgets the other side of the aisle

Mark Turner — 2010-02-26T13:53:33+00:00

The N&O’s Mark Johnson reported on state Senator R.C. Soles’s guilty plea to assault charges yesterday. I don’t know the true circumstances of what took place at Soles’s house, though when a homeowner shoots a stranger in their home it’s often in self-defense. Soles pled guilty and that’s that.

I do take issue with the way Johnson painted the picture that it’s almost always Democrats in trouble. Johnson seems to forget state Rep. Cary Allred, the Burlington Republican who was about to get ticketed for driving 102 MPH but pulled rank on the trooper and got off – at least until the news broke. He was also said to have showed up drunk to the General Assembly and gave what many witnesses considered to be an inappropriate hug to a female teenage page. Not exactly Boy Scout behavior, is it?

I’m just as upset as others are of the shenanigans taking place with state politicians. Unlike most politics lately, though, this truly is a bipartisan effort. Let’s not omit that, Mr. Johnson.

Mark Turner: Cheap Thoughts: Dalai Lama and traffic

Mark Turner — 2010-02-26T13:23:24+00:00

I was wondering if the Dalai Lama would be as happy if he had to deal each day with morning traffic.

Mark Hinkle: Open Source Advocates Lobby Obama

Mark — 2010-02-25T05:27:40+00:00

On February 6, the White House Open Government Initiative launched a government wide public participation opportunity. As part of the Open Government Directive issued in early December, every major agency published an open government website.

In response the Open Source for America (OSFA) initiative has submitted their: “Proposed Guidelines for Open Government Plans” to the Obama Administration for consideration. These plans are meant to encourage the government to embrace the open source ideals of participation, collaboration and transparency.

The proposal notes that there is, ” ….a tremendous opportunity to capture the innovation and ingenuity of government employees, who have the means to create their own tools to make themselves more effective, rather than waiting for a cumbersome and unresponsive procurement process. Open source software is, in fact, the most concrete form of participation available to the government’s constituents and its employees”

To get involved the Administration has invited public comments on each agency’s open government page through March 19, 2010. Open source advocates are encouraged to visit these agencies listed on the White House website and share their opinion.

Technorati Tags: government, Open Source, United States

Mark Turner: The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Mark Turner — 2010-02-25T04:02:37+00:00

I just finished watching The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, a film about the life of the actor best known for his roles in the Pink Panther movies and Dr. Strangelove. It showed a side of Sellers I was unfamiliar with, that of a man who was emotionally stunted to a severe degree. Like millions I was captivated by Seller’s performances, as he always seemed like a bomb ready to go off. Apparently there was good reason.

Geoffrey Rush plays Sellers and does an absolutely fantastic job of it. It isn’t easy to slip into roles you so closely associate with another actor but Rush wins the audience over into believing he is Sellers. Charlize Theron is also great as his suffering second wife. And John Lithgow plays Blake Edwards masterfully.

Sellers didn’t live a happy life, at least from what this film shows, but he was a brilliant comic. Watching Sellers’ life in this film isn’t always easy, but it is fascinating look at a talented but troubled man.

Mark Hinkle: Rube Goldberg Would be Proud

Mark — 2010-02-24T22:12:09+00:00

Rube Goldberg would be proud of this machine.

Things to Do with a Cadbury Cream Egg – watch more funny videos

Technorati Tags: cadbury egg, funny

Tarus Balog: OpenNMS in Africa

tarus — 2010-02-24T18:50:25+00:00

For over three years now, OpenNMS has been heavily involved in bringing open source development techniques to the world’s largest telecommunications providers through the TeleManagement Forum (TMForum).

Dr. Craig Gallen (OGP) is the leader of the TMForum Interface Program (TIP) and he is making a number of presentations about our work with TIP. The first one is being held at the Management World Africa conference tomorrow (25 February).

For many years carriers have be asking for a greater number of open interfaces so that the various management products they need can more easily interact. Needless to say, getting proprietary software companies to share their work has been difficult, but the hope is that by using open source techniques along with permissive licensing we can both increase the number of open interfaces as well as speed their development.

Craig will also be at the Management World Middle East conference, and both of us will be at the main Management World conference in Nice, France in May. If you are going to be at any of these, please stop by and introduce yourself, and we can explain in more depth what we are trying to accomplish.

Mark Turner: City email addresses are public records

Mark Turner — 2010-02-24T13:27:32+00:00

My friend John Beimler decided to take advantage of the Public Records law and get a copy of all the email addresses from all the email lists the Town of Cary maintains. The following email went out to all the folks on those lists:

We want to let you know that a person has requested a copy of the e-mail addresses from all Town of Cary electronic mailing lists, and as a subscriber, your email address is included in this database. Therefore, you may begin receiving emails from others outside of our control. As a reminder, the database is a public record under North Carolina law (see our Public Records Policy and our Privacy Statement).
The email lists are being requested by:
John Beimler
1206 Castalia Dr
Cary, NC 27513
919-926-7264
jbeimler at radiomind dot com.
As always, we apologize for any inconvenience this may bring and hope that the actions of others will not result in your deciding to unsubscribe from the Town’s e-mail service. Please contact us if you have questions or need further information.
Susan Moran, APR
Town of Cary Public Information Officer
susan dot moran at townofcary dot org

So, why did John do it? I don’t know, you’ll have to ask him. But what’s most surprising to me is that this is the first time I’ve heard of this happening. News media request emails from municipalities from time to time and if you’re one of the subjects of their email searches, you’ll get an email similar to the one above letting you know that you’ve been searched. Aside from that there’s nothing you can do about it – nor should you – as a public record is a public record. If you’re doing business with the city others have a right to know what you’re doing.

Even outside of John’s request, it surprises me that there are still some folks who think their email address is privileged information, when in actuality every email address is known to someone out there on the Internet. Like the old saw about the only secure computer is the one that’s unplugged, the only private email address is the one that’s never been set up.

Update: John says via Twitter that he requested the info because it’s public record:

@mdhillison Because it is a public record and an interesting place to start on finding out information about people interested in Cary

John also posted this on Facebook this morning:

John Beimler I need to mess with the Town more often, I’ve heard from more people and more of my friends today than I normally do in months! Hi, everyone, no I don’t plan to be a jerk, but public information requests sure are fun!

Update 26 Feb: The story has been covered by WTVD

Mark Hinkle: Southern California Linux Expo(SCaLE 8x) Recap

Mark — 2010-02-24T03:27:20+00:00

In a time when many tradeshows are experiencing lower then normal attendance the 8th Annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE 8x) had record attendance this past weekend in Los Angeles. I was there exhibiting and conducting a community training day for Zenoss and was very impressed by not only the quality of the program but the enthusiasm of the attendees.

Here are some of the highlights:

The Mini Conferences

On the Friday before the main SCaLE expo and speaking program starts many people hold mini-conferences and the SCaLE staff has been excellent at helping to organize and promote the events. I conducted a Zenoss Community Day that Friday with phenomenal attendance and enjoyed meeting a great group of open source management users. I also peeked in on Ubucon which had a standing room only crowd of Ubuntu users. There were also quite a few other special events that seemed to be well attended.

The Keynotes

I got to watch both keynotes this year and they were both excellent. Here’s a little recap.

Karsten Wade’s – Being a Catalyst in Communities – The scientific facts about the open source way

Karsten’s a bona fide community builder helping drive the growth of the Fedora project, an open source distribution sponsored by Red Hat. His talk was a great overview of how to drive community participation and better yet, what results not to discount. He also announced the newly published free book, The Open Source Way – Creating and nurturing communities of contributors. A blue print of how to apply open source principles to communities and facilitate participation. In his presentation he made reference to an initiative sponsored by Red Hat, Professors Open Source Summer Experience (POSSE), to help professors understand how to get their students involved in open source which was very cool.

He also made some interesting references to research done by Etienne Wenger on Communities of Practice, which are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. Which is part of the science indicated in the time of the talk.

Tarus Balog’s – So, You Think You Want to Start an Open Source Business

Tarus is the lead of the OpenNMS project which he maintains in conjunction with a services business, The OpenNMS Group. He offers a very candid tale of his starting the OpenNMS group using the board game, Life, as a metaphor. It was very clever. Tarus and I share a common interest in open source IT management given the companies and projects with but we have some different philosophical views on how to develop those companies and communities. Despite that I really respect his passion for his project and his company. I thought his presentation was very well done and really enjoyed his talk.

Both keynotes are available here on UStream.

Sessions

I got to sit in on Stephen Spector’s presentation on Xen and had a lot of time to talk to him through out the show. Xen fascinates me as a open source virtualization technology it’s used everywhere and even serves as the infrastructure for Amazon EC2.

I was there to man the Zenoss booth so I missed out on a couple of scaling and cloud presentations but the word was they were all great:

Ari Lerner’s presentation on Pool Party. Written in ruby, PoolParty provides a nice domain specific language for describing a repeatable, declarative cloud computing infrastructure. Mainly focusing on amazon’s EC2 offering, the presentation will cover basic concepts of cloud computing, how PoolParty works and how you can get into the clouds in one command
Scaling Facebook via Open Source – Given their use of of the following open source projects in highly available deployments I thought this would be interesting: Cassandra, Hive, Haystack, memcached, MySQL, PHP, Scribe, and Thrift.

If you are an open source fan or vendor and can make the trip, I highly recommend attending to SCale 9x next February.

SCaLE 8x Report – (linuxjournal.com)
Improving the FLOSS legal landscape (iquaid.org)
SCALE8X Day 2. Ubuntu Kernel Hardware Compatibility Testing. (canonical.com)
SCALE8X Final Day Ubuntu Hardware Compatibility Testing. (canonical.com)

Technorati Tags: Fedora, LInuxfest, Los Angeles, Open Source, OpenNMS, SCALE8x, Xen

Mark Turner: Asterisk hacking

Mark Turner — 2010-02-24T03:06:12+00:00

I had reason to check my Asterisk phone server logs today and noticed some script kiddies have been knocking on its door. Apparently an exploit kit exists that hacks into Asterisk PBXs and allows you to register as a phone on these systems. Way back in 2002 I put some firewall rules in place which allowed fairly wide open access to my Asterisk system. They had been there so long that I never revisited them, but on the other hand I never had much reason to.

I’m not quite sure what the point is as VoIP makes calling any number in the world virtually free, and VoIP-to-VoIP calls are completely free. Where’s the incentive to hack? Heck, back in my day when ten-cents-per-minute long distance was considered a bargain there were plenty of tools and methods to get free calls. Not that I ever tried them, mind you, but I knew a number of people who did (Apple Computer might not exist today if it weren’t for this kind of petty larceny).

Anyhow, here are a few snippets of the Asterisk log file, showing the accesses. The script walks through all the possible extension combinations until it hits on one that provides a different response. Then the script hammers that registration with a brute-force dictionary attack. Note: my IPs/extensions have been changed.

[Feb 16 11:50:16] NOTICE[23217] chan_sip.c: Registration from ‘”9997″[sip:9997@24.0.0.1]‘ failed for ‘194.45.186.252′ – No matching peer found
[Feb 16 11:50:16] NOTICE[23217] chan_sip.c: Registration from ‘”9998″ [sip:9998@24.0.0.1]‘ failed for ‘194.45.186.252′ – No matching peer found
[Feb 16 11:50:16] NOTICE[23217] chan_sip.c: Registration from ‘”9999″[sip:9999@24.0.0.1]‘ failed for ‘194.45.186.252′ – No matching peer found
[Feb 16 11:50:56] NOTICE[23217] chan_sip.c: Registration from ‘”4467″[sip:4467@24.0.0.1]‘ failed for ‘194.45.186.252′ – Wrong password
[Feb 16 11:58:04] NOTICE[23217] chan_sip.c: Registration from ‘”4467″[sip:4467@24.0.0.1]‘ failed for ‘194.45.186.252′ – Wrong password
[...]

Possible means of strengthening Asterisk include:

Tighter firewall rules (duh), but that also limits the ability to conduct of VoIP-to-VoIP calls. Instead, only certain hosts (my VoIP provider, for instance) are allowed to connect. If all you want your sophisticated VoIP system to do is to emulate 100-year-old phone technology, that’s great, but it severely limits the potential of VoIP.
Adding a delay after every failed password attempt. This is done on most password systems today to greatly increase the running time of a dictionary attack. As it stands, Asterisk will happily let any dumb schmuck blaze through a dictionary as fast as she pleases.
Key-based authentication. I believe SIP peers (Asterisk to Asterisk, for instance) can do this but I don’t know if SIP endpoints like phones have this ability yet. With keys, the only registration attempts that succeed are the ones presenting the appropriate cryptographic key.

For now, I’ve closed off my firewall rules and sent the kiddies on their way. I’ve also set dictionary-resistant passwords on all of my SIP devices. Even though this attack was not successful, it’s led me to explore other ways of hardening my Asterisk server.

NOTE TO THE SCRIPT KIDDIES: Thanks for Googling my site! I’ve logged your IP address. Your mom is so kicking you out of the house when she finds out.

Update: It looks like the folks at Digium have been addressing this since 2006.

Update 2, 24 Feb: According to this page (and the update above), setting this option in sip.conf will solve the problem by not allowing any information leak when a hacker hits upon a valid username:

alwaysauthreject

If this option is enabled, whenever Asterisk rejects an INVITE or REGISTER, it will always reject it with a 401 Unauthorized message instead of letting the caller know whether there was a matching user or peer for their request.

alwaysauthreject=no|yes

Tarus Balog: Race Update: BMWCCA Road Atlanta

tarus — 2010-02-23T21:38:32+00:00

Jason has posted the results of the OpenNMS Spec E30 BMW from this weekend’s race at BMWCCA Road Atlanta.

He managed a second place finish on Sunday. Go, speed racer, go.

The next two events are driving schools, but they should be followed by our first first place finish. Right Jason? (grin)

Warren Myers: denita smith, 1981-2007

antipaucity — 2010-02-23T18:35:31+00:00

As I mentioned a few days ago, I was a juror on a trial. That trial was the State of North Carolina vs Shannon Crawley in the unlawful death of Denita Smith on 04-Jan-2007.

Miss Smith’s fiancee, Jermier Stroud, was implicated by the defendant. Mr Stroud is a police officer in Greensboro. Under oath, and in his previously-sworn statements, he showed himself to be a scuz-ball. Simultaneously dating Denita (for 7 years) and Shannon (for 1.5 years in the middle of the time he was “with” Denita, and culminating in a pregnancy). Under oath he admitted that he never planned to tell either girl about the other. Under oath he showed himself to be untrustworthy, a “player”, a liar, and just a general “bad guy”.

He also said that within a couple months of Denita’s murder he was dating again.

However, as bad an individual as we all believe Mr Stroud to be, he could not have been at Denita’s apartment on either 03-Jan or 04-Jan, as Miss Crawley claimed – whereas she was at the apartment the day before (I think to “scope it out”), and admits to being there on the morning of 04-Jan. She claimed that Jermier had kidnapped her to Durham both days – but multiple incoming and outgoing cell phone calls place him in or near Greensboro on the third. With those, and many other, holes in her story, we found Miss Crawley to be guilty of murder in the first degree of Miss Smith.

None of us wanted to find her guilty. I believe we all wanted to believe her: we wanted someone like Mr Stroud to be punished for what he had contributed. However, as the evidence was presented and reviewed, that conclusion was not possible.

I personally think that he’s responsible for the death of his fiancee – he did several things that I think should disqualify him at least as a police officer (reliability, lying, trustworthiness) – I do not believe he was the one who pulled the trigger. I think he was the causative factor in Miss Crawley’s crime, but causative factors do not alleviate her of guilt in the actual crime.

I’m sure this will be appealed.

I hope Mr Stroud is brought out of his place of service to the community for having acted in such ways. However, regardless of his contributions to the crime, Miss Crawley still had a choice until the moment she pulled the trigger – and did not opt to stop.

N&O report.

Tarus Balog: SCaLE 8x

tarus — 2010-02-22T23:08:12+00:00

I have safely made it back home from SCaLE 8x. Once again it was a great show. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see many talks since I was manning the OpenNMS booth, but the feedback I hear was that most of them were excellent. I really hate the fact that I missed seeing Brian Aker, although he posted some interesting comments on his blog about the show.

My Sunday keynote seemed to be well received. I was a little nervous – not because I was speaking in front of a large crowd, but because I like the show so much I didn’t want to disappoint. If you were unable to see it and are curious about my thoughts on starting an open source business, it is available via streaming on-line.

I made some new friends and after the show managed to spend some time with Karen Sandler and Bradley Kuhn. Bradley and I were able to continue our debate on copyright assignment, with me firmly in the camp of dual copyright and him warning that the potential for evil is still too high. I don’t think we changed each others mind any, but like any rational argument I hope that we each can see better into the others reasoning.

I always love the fact that user group and volunteer driven conferences like SCaLE seem to be better than the “professional” conferences I attend. I am looking forward to SELF in June, where we are a diamond sponsor. Jeff went last year and said it was great, but this will be my first time attending.

More importantly, I am getting more and more excited every day about the OpenNMS users conference in May. I couldn’t be happier with the speakers. The first day, with the exception of my talks, is completely made up of users of OpenNMS who can tell their stories of how they use it, why they like it, and how it makes their jobs easier.

The second day features some of the main developers of the project giving in-depth workshops on the internals of OpenNMS. If you ever wanted to get started customizing the software, this is the place to be.

Remember, early-bird registration is available at a discount and we are required to limit the number of attendees due to space constraints, so if you are interested in coming be sure to register early and often.

Hope to see you there, at SCaLE or at SELF. Be sure to stop by and say “hi”.

Mark Turner: Swervin’ In My Lane

Mark Turner — 2010-02-22T15:38:09+00:00

Swervin’ In My Lane
Robert Earl Keen, Jr.

Sometimes I don’t know what I’m doing
‘Cause sometimes all my days are filled with rain
As I travel down life’s highway, things ain’t going my way
‘Cause there’s always someone swervin’ in my lane
You keep a-swervin’ in my lane and it’s causing’ lots of danger
I’m a-honkin’ on my horn, I’m a-shooting you the finger
I keep a-switchin’ on my bright lights, but you’re just too dim to know
When your swervin’ on life’s highway, you’re running someone off the road

The day you drove away I thought I never
Could love another. How else could I feel?
But now when you run into me, I can’t believe I could not see
Your all tanked up, but no ones at the wheel

You keep a-swervin’ in my lane and it’s causin’ lots of danger
I’m a-cussin’ out your name, I’m a shooting you the finger
I keep a-switchin’ on my bright lights, but your just too dim to know
When your swervin’ on life’s highway, your running someone off the road

When and if I ever finally pass you
Oh when I do and if I’m still alive
I want never see you, cause I’m ripping out my rearview
And I’m shifting it on in to overdrive

But your still swervin’ in my lane and it’s causin’ lots of danger
I’m a-stompin’ on the foot feed, I’m a shooting you the finger
I keep a-switchin’ on my bright lights, but you’re just too dim to know
When your swervin’ on life’s highway, you’re running someone off the road

Mark Turner: FBI hangs anthrax case on Bruce Ivans

Mark Turner — 2010-02-21T02:04:34+00:00

So, yesterday the FBI announced it was closing its investigation on the 2001 anthrax attacks, saying it was convinced that it was the work of Dr. Bruce Ivins. The report the FBI released paints a picture of Ivins as a man with mental problems, in effect posthumously convicting a man who will never get a trial. Anytime someone gets convicted of something after they can’t defend themselves my BS detectors go on high alert. Looks like my initial hunch about the case is being proven out.

The anthrax attacks are a curious event in our history. Coming on the heels of the September 11th attacks, conservative hawks like to conveniently forget these attacks whenever they spout the fallacy that America’s response to the 9/11 attacks kept more terrorist attacks from taking place, as if mailing deadly pathogens to United States Senators doesn’t qualify as terrorism. In my mind, the FBI’s report shows all the signs of an investigation not really wanting to know where the facts lead, perhaps because doing so would raise uncomfortable questions best left unasked.

Experts have cast a lot of doubt on the FBI’s case. As for Ivins purported mental problems, I would think anyone would have to be at least a little sick in the head to want to work with some of the deadliest pathogens on our planet. I’m glad they do it but I fully realize that this is not normal stuff here. A bad day at the office takes on a whole new meaning. But even by the bar of a “normal” biohazard researcher, if Ivins was really the “Crazy Bruce” that the FBI makes him out to have been, how was he allowed to work with the deadliest poisons on the planet? Why haven’t any heads rolled?

Though the equipment used isn’t commonplace, the recipe for making anthrax is anything but a secret. Many foreign governments can create it. Some of these governments might have had motive for dispersing it in the American attacks. To say that this is the work of one person acting alone, especially one who can’t defend himself in court, is something I’m just not buying.

Mark Turner: Tuscany Industries calling again?

Mark Turner — 2010-02-20T01:31:10+00:00

Judging by the huge spike in Internet searches bringing people to my website, it looks as if the scammers hiding behind the fake “Tuscany Industries” Caller ID are back in action. I chronicled my experience with them two years ago in a number of posts, which have now bubbled up to the top of the Google search for Tuscany Industries.

Since the calls for me personally have stopped, I’m not sure what scam is being run now. Is it the “lower your credit card debt” or “OMG your car’s warranty is expiring!!11!” Either way, it doesn’t matter: it serves as a wake up call to me to proceed with my lawsuit against these scumbags.

Yes, I have a good idea where they are. And yes, I’m pissed enough to get a piece of them. Let’s get going.

If you’ve gotten a call from “Tuscany Industries” and interacted with the lowlifes on the other end, drop me a comment here and let me know the scoop. The more info I can gather for the lawsuit, the better.

Tarus Balog: … for Lease?

tarus — 2010-02-19T20:44:48+00:00

Okay, I have a weird sense of humour and I saw this on Century Boulevard and thought it was funny:

Mark Hinkle: Twitter and Open Source

Mark — 2010-02-19T06:53:15+00:00

How do you build one of the busiest websites on the Internet? You wouldn’t guess the right answer to be, “You download some free software and hack it”…Actually the question is how do you build one of the world’s busiest websites that will scale affordably? You use open source software.

Twitter showed everyone their cards recently by publishing all the open source projects that they are contributing to. This is the picture of how open source software should work.

Organization has a a big, hard problem to solve. They write some software or update existing software and then publish what they did for others to use.

The people writing the software are writing it to solve a real problem. Not to sell it to people with real problems or to prevent the problems a clever sales guy manufactures. Given Twitter’s massive amount of users and traffic it’s probably one of the most demanding IT environments in the world. If these are the people making the software than you have some idea that it an stand up to scalability issues in other use cases (Failwhale’s not withstanding).

Not only do the Twitter engineers donate their work to the open source community they also share their insights on what happens in their environment on the Twitter Engineering Blog.

As I look at what the Twitter guys are working on it’s pretty impressive and has a fairly substantial impact on high availability computing. Some of the projects that caught my attention:

scribe.gem – A Ruby client for the Scribe distributed log server.
contributions to memcached.gem – An interface to the libmemcached C client. (memcache is a distributed systems for improving performance across dynamic web apps)
contributions to cassandra – A highly scalable second-generation distributed database.
contributions to hadoop – A platform for analyzing large data sets.
contributions to pig – A platform for analyzing large data sets.

Any how it’s good to see open source users giving back their improvements, I love it when a plan comes together.

Twitter Loves Open Source And Launches A Directory To Prove It (techcrunch.com)

Planet TriLUG

Warren Myers: from `fortune`

Mark Turner: Cheap Thoughts: Kitchen timers

Tarus Balog: Upcoming OpenNMS Events

Tarus Balog: OpenNMS in Botswana

Jesse Morgan: Complex ACLs in Apache Locations

UPDATE:

Tanner Lovelace: My wife on (Internet) TV

Mark Hinkle: Tech Coverage, Twitter and the Top 8 Business Pubs

Mark Turner: Let them

Mark Turner: Instant Karma

Mark Turner: A little downtime

Mark Turner: Blizzard of ‘77

Mark Turner: Last day with Gerry

Mark Hinkle: Xen Hypervisor Monitoring with Open Source Zenoss Core

Mark Turner: Gerry’s gone

Tarus Balog: Linux Link Tech Show Available for Download

Mark Turner: Remembering the good times

Mark Turner: Sinking in

Tanner Lovelace: Porsche 918 Spyder Hybrid Concept gets 78 mpg

Mark Turner: Holding out for a miracle

Chess Griffin: Blog > /dev/null

Tarus Balog: The Tail of the Dragon

Tarus Balog: New Order of the Green Polo Members

Mark Turner: Gerry Reid website

Tarus Balog: The Open Core Functionality Ceiling

Jason Evans: Liberals, Atheists Are Smarter Than Conservatives

Mark Turner: My friend Gerry Reid severely injured

Mark Turner: Where does the weekend go?

Tarus Balog: Earthquake in Chile

Mark Turner: 876-561-5492 and 876-559-3893

Scott Schulz: Congrats to the Brother

Tarus Balog: Open Source and Building Networks

Tarus Balog: The Linux Link Tech Show

Mark Turner: SeaWorld whale trainer’s last moments

Mark Turner: N&O forgets the other side of the aisle

Mark Turner: Cheap Thoughts: Dalai Lama and traffic

Mark Hinkle: Open Source Advocates Lobby Obama

Mark Turner: The Life and Death of Peter Sellers

Mark Hinkle: Rube Goldberg Would be Proud

Tarus Balog: OpenNMS in Africa

Mark Turner: City email addresses are public records

Mark Hinkle: Southern California Linux Expo(SCaLE 8x) Recap

The Mini Conferences

The Keynotes

Karsten Wade’s – Being a Catalyst in Communities – The scientific facts about the open source way

Tarus Balog’s – So, You Think You Want to Start an Open Source Business

Sessions

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