Internet Archive

The media's ability to turn a cute idea into a raging hype feedback loop has crossed with the post Sept 11th paranoia factor yet again as an FBI field office in Pittsburgh warns businesses of the pernicious new pastime of "Warchalking." See this Computerworld story. Warchalking is the latest non-trend to sweep the internet, and it involves scrawling information about close-by wireless networks on the streets in chalk. Despite the fact that nobody is actually doing it, just about every media outlet in the world has reported on it.

Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems plan to announce new specifications Monday that the companies hope will help drive adoption of Web services. Read the report at ZDNews, but where is Sun's involvement? Clearly there should be some.

This tutorial (reg. required) reviews various network configuration files required by Linux, how to initialize a network interface, and how to edit the system's routing table. The tutorial closes with a brief look at how to analyze your network and ensure that data gets to where it's supposed to go, without error.

OneStat today reported that Mozilla 1.0 has shown a fast adoptation rate with a global usage share of 0.4 percent in the first two weeks of its public launch. Netscape 7.0 has gotten off to a quick start in its first month of release. The global usage share of Netscape 7.0 is 0.3 percent. However, Microsoft’s Explorer 6.0 continues to rise with a global usage share of 1.7 percent since April 2002 and has a global usage share of 46.4 percent. Check out the complete statistics.

Want to integrate your Microsoft client machines with a Linux or Unix server? Open-source Samba turns a Unix or Linux system into a file and print server for Microsoft Windows network clients. Roll up your sleeves, take this tutorial, and learn how, to configure Samba as a primary domain controller.

"IBM and Microsoft have been quietly busy behind the scenes for the last two years building a toll booth that could position the two companies to collect royalties on most if not all Internet traffic. While the technologies that form the foundation of that toll booth have yet to be officially recognized as standards by an independent standards body, the collective strength of IBM and Microsoft could be enough to render Internet standards consortia powerless to stop them." Read the rest of the report at ZDNews.

Apache 2.0 offers numerous enhancements, improvements and performance boosts over the 1.3 codebase. The most visible and noteworthy addition is the ability to run Apache in a hybrid thread/process mode on any platform that supports both threads and processes. This has shown to improve the scalability of the Apache HTTP Server significantly in our testing. Apache 2.0 also includes support for filtered I/O. This allows modules to modify the output of other modules before it is sent to the client. There is also support for IPv6 on any platform that supports IPv6. This version of Apache is known to work on many versions of Unix, BeOS, OS/2, Windows, and Netware.

"There are many ways to define distributed computing, and there are many different levels and types of distributed computing models and distributed application development techniques. Various vendors have created and marketed distributed computing systems for years, and numerous initiatives and architectures have been developed to permit distributed processing of data and objects across a network of connected systems." An excellent, must read, introduction to distributed computing. Especially, have a look at its interesting comparison with clusters and supercomputers.

"Whether you're an administrator or a developer, you must understand what's in store for you when you start using Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0, which ships as part of the Windows .NET Server product line. The key interests of developers and administrators alike include security, stability, scalability, and programmability. Here's how IIS addresses those needs". Read the interesting review at .NETMag, while you can also similar explore interesting articles like "Evaluate Windows .NET Server" and "Internet Information Services 6.0 Overview - Beta 3".

"An alternative to Apache, this Swedish company's web server offers modularity, a built-in macro language (RXML) and Pike. The Roxen WebServer, from the Swedish company Roxen Internet Software, is a viable alternative for those who find Apache inappropriate for their needs. Although Apache dominates the internet web server market, it has some weak points: it lacks a built-in SQL database backend, flexible administration tools and easy SSL certificate management. All of these features can be found, however, in the Roxen WebServer. In fact, Roxen includes so many additional features that it seems more like an application server than an ordinary web server." Read the rest of the review at LinuxJournal.

BeServed is a native network file system for BeOS. It allows you to share files between computers running BeOS. You can connect to (i.e., mount) folders from remote computers and access files just as if those files were local to your computer. Unlike NFS and CIFS, BeServed supports all the unique benefits of the Be File System (BFS), such as attributes, MIME-based typing, indexes, querying etc. (BFS features are only available on the BeOS platform; foreign versions of the file server do no yet support attributes, indexing, etc.) BeServed includes a network browsing application called 'My Network', which lists the available computers on your network in much the same way as Microsoft's Network Neighborhood. The company now ported their product to Solaris, following releases of Linux & Windows.

"Whether you run a small business or large corporation -- or just have a desktop PC at home -- if you're connected to the Internet for any amount of time, you need a firewall to keep your data safe. People with ill intentions will try everything from stealing your credit card data, to exploiting open mail relays for spam, or even manipulating potential (and unwitting) participants in Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks." Read the interesting Linux firewall roundup article at UnixReview.

Irish asks: "As the arguement over wireless LAN standards continue, The New York Times ran an article announcing Palm's release of its Bluetooth Software Developer Kit and vowed to release hardware in the fall. On a similar note, alphaWorks released a Bluetooth Protocol Stack for Linux, BlueDrekar. My question is, "is anyone using Bluetooth with their Linux system?".

Netscape has released their latest browser, Netscape 6.21 which is based on the Mozilla technology, containing a number of bug fixes. There is a version for Linux, MacOS and Windows. In the meantime, Opera released the second technology preview for Linux for version 6, while MacOS only recently got their second beta for Opera 5.