Is Ad Blocking Unethical?

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There has been a raging debate in the open source community surrounding adware, spyware, Web page framing, and the user’s ability to control his or her computing environment. At the heart of this conflict is the advertisement blocking add-on for the Firefox web browser called AdBlock Plus. This utility makes it possible for users to … Read more

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Windows Backup 2008: Another Royal Mess

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I am always baffled by the constant ability of Microsoft to take something that was working very well and turn it upside down all in the name of trying to improve the product. The list is long so we won’t even bother. The latest in this list is the supposedly new and improved Windows Server Backup 2008. In my opinion, this is one of the most frustrating thing the company has done to small business owners in terms of backing up files. Don’t get me wrong, the concept behind the product makes sense – for those who can afford it. It has:

  • Faster backup technology.
  • Simplified restoration.
  • Simplified recovery of your operating system.
  • Ability to recover applications.
  • Improved scheduling.
  • Offsite removal of backups for disaster protection.
  • Remote administration.
  • Automatic disk usage management.
  • Extensive command-line support.
  • Support for optical media drives and removable media.

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What Can Astaro Linux Do For You?

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I had a client who was just getting killed by spammers. Every morning their inbox was loaded with junk mail and they had as much as five thousand (5,000) emails in their spam filter box when they came in. I decided to help them out with the free version of Astaro Security Gateway. We threw the software version (v7) on an old AMD box they had lying around – 2GHz processor, 20GB IDE drive, 512 RAM, two NICS. What a difference spam filtering at the perimeter of the network makes! The first week was like “wow”. Astaro actually generates a daily report and for email filtering we had 36,930 processed. Get this, out of that number, 36,832 was categorized as “Spam emails blocked”. And the live log was right there for us to see. Emails the system was not sure about were placed in quarantine and you have the option of having an admin view, release or delete those emails, or have a report sent to the affected user. The report even had a “Top 10 Spam Sender” entry with the IP addresses and countries of origin (little flags) of the bad guys. There was also a “Top 5 Spam Countries” entry on the report.

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Virtualbox 2.2.2 Install Issues

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Oracle/Sun Microsystems recently released an update version of the excellent virtual machine software called Virtualbox. But for some weird reason, I have been unable to either upgrade from the previous version or do a fresh installation in Windows XP, Vista Ultimate, Vista Home Premium 64-bit and Vista Business 64-bit . The installation always timed out … Read more

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Oracle, Sun and the SMB Market

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With the announcement today of the multi-billion dollar acquisition of Sun Microsystems by Oracle, the database market has suddenly been thrown into a state of flux. The earlier rumor was that IBM was interested in buying Sun.

This is especially significant because of the myriad of products owned by the merged company.

Sun has over the years positioned itself as a systems company and has expanded its sphere of influence in that arena. So what is the driving force behind this purchase? Some have argued that is is driven by the new move toward integration. According to CNet, this idea dates back to a concept called Raw Iron. In other words, it is an attempt to move Oracle from the horizontal market space it has been stuck in into a vertical market where Sun has made its mark, kind of.

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