RDMNetworks Archive

RDM Networks News Article

News @ 2008-11-18

A picture is worth 1000 words. PLEASE start using a good browser! This is the result of an acid test on Opera, Firefox, Konqueror, and last AND DEFINITELY least, Internet Explorer.

acid results

It's ELECTION DAY! Although it may be un-wise to list political affiliation here, it was also suggested that I remove my picture because I am white and may get bumped down the list for a job. Obviously this didn't worry me and neither does saying VOTE MCCAIN!!!

http://rdmnetworks.com/stuff/obama.wmv

News @ 2008-10-15

Compression roundup: Who is the alpha-dog of bit crunching? I did a roundup of the big 5 (gz, bz2, zip, rar, and 7z) and here are the results on a 327M mysql dump. The results are in order from best to worse. 7z was by far the shining champion at 45M beating the next best (bz2 - 57M) by 12M and the loser (zip) by 24M!

-rwxr-x--- 1 redbeardmcg redbeardmcg 46870744 Oct 15 14:31 keg.mysql.dump.7z
-rwxr-x--- 1 redbeardmcg redbeardmcg 59069909 Oct 15 14:45 keg.mysql.dump.bz2
-rwxr-x--- 1 redbeardmcg redbeardmcg 61266259 Oct 15 15:01 keg.mysql.dump.rar
-rwxr-x--- 1 redbeardmcg redbeardmcg 72059791 Oct 15 14:16 keg.mysql.dump.gz
-rwxr-x--- 1 redbeardmcg redbeardmcg 72059858 Oct 15 14:55 keg.mysql.dump.zip

So the big question... Why the hell is .zip the most commonly exchanged compressed file format? Because zip support is built into Microsoft windoez. When will the madness end???

News @ 2008-09-12

GUI GUI everywhere but not a shell to bash. Is the user's visual experience the most important part of an operating system? The reality to attracting non-technical users to an O.S. is you have to give them eye candy. An aesthetically pleasing environment has been and continues to be one of the MO's of Canonical and now Mark Shuttleworth is dropping some coin to make Ubuntu more [~~usable~~?] pretty.

Check out his blog post here: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/162

News @ 2008-08-20

Keg (the host this is running on) just had a catastrophic filesystem failure (2/4 disks in raid5). I have re-built the array in a raid6 container and taken a hit in storage to prevent this from happening again. Most of my data was lost so it may take a while to get everything back up and running.

News @ 2008-03-10

Linux vs. BSD. After having read a few articles with differing benchmarks between Linux and FreeBSD servers I am going to do a few of my own. BSD's SMP support has gotten a lot better, so it should be interesting to see how the 2 stack up. My prediction:

Security: BSD
Performance: Linux

News @ 2008-01-30

I just signed a job with Sonus Networks in Westford, MA. Sonus makes carrier grade equipment that services the VoIP industry such as circuit to packet tandem switches and network border switches. I will be starting Monday feb. 4th as a Technical Support Engineer!

News @ 2007-12-04

December 17th.... that is the last day of college for me and I will be looking for a full time position. I am currently in the interview process with a few companies, and hopefully I can start talking figures soon so I can start widening my networking skills. Wish me luck, and if you know of any positions opening up in the technology sector, be sure to keep me in mind!

News @ 2007-10-02

The Ohio LinuxFest of 2007 has recently gone underway, and there were some very hopeful projects. The developers of ZenOss, an open source IT management project, demo'd their latest alpha of ZenOss, and it looks to have some awesome features. Ubuntu, Fedora, Redhat, and a few newer distributions made an appearance to hand out swag, and there were some interesting seminars from IBM and Novell.

News @ 2007-09-20

Day one of the Linux boot camp that I am running was successful! There was enough people attending to justify 2 sessions, and I got a lot of positive response back. So if you are in the Ft. Wayne area, swing by IIT next wednesday at 6:00 for a free Linux boot camp.

News @ 2007-09-13

After the recent move back to Indiana, Comcast had a little hickup that brought down rdmnetworks.com. After many long hours on the phone, my network has been re-wired back home, and the site should be up for good now!

Check back soon for some updates.

News @ 2007-08-20

The Swiss Internet Users Group is currently in the process of appealing a decision to enforce Microsoft's OOXML as a document standard in Switzerland. OOXML DOES NOT map to any other non-microsoft document format, and does not map to the current ISO standard (The Oasis Open Document Format [ODF]).

Hopefully more groups will take arms against the monopolistic, anti-competitive behavior of Microsoft and keep the Internet, and our computers the way they should be: free and open.

Go to http://www.rdmnetworks.com/site/siug-appeal-of-ooxml for the full appeal.

News @ 2007-08-17

HP turns to Linux for datacenter of the future
Hewlett-Packard's ambition to build the "next-generation datacenter" depends on Linux and open source, an HP executive said at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo Wednesday.

HP ships one Linux-based server every minute, Livermore noted, and has been shipping them for nine years.

The energy efficiency of all servers has become the issue "every customer wants to talk about," she said and applauded the new functionality added to the Linux kernel that improves energy efficiency by putting Linux systems into low-power states when there's a pause in computing.

HP is a member of the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit group supporting Linux, and has made its own contributions to Linux with the COE (common operating environment) software for datacenter management. LinuxCOE 4.0 was released by HP earlier this year under the general public license governing open source software. LinuxCOE helps automate the lifecycle management of software, including provisioning, configuration, compliance, patch management, and delivery to a desktop computer.

For one longtime Linux believer, the notion of Fortune 500 companies such as HP investing in Linux is something that's hard to believe.

News @ 2007-08-13

Google has increased its support for the open-source Linux operating system by becoming Open Invention Network's first end-user licensee. The OIN was founded to protect Linux against patent infringement attacks from software giants such as Microsoft, and Google should bring it quite a bit of attention.

Chris DiBona, the open-source programs manager at Goggle stated that "ever since Google got its start, Linux has given us the power and flexibility we need to serve millions of users around the world." Companies like Google, and the more than 100 firms that have partnered with OIN have provided enough money for OIN to have already spent $15 million in open source patent porfolios, and according to OIN, backers have funded him "to buy patents ad infinitum" and the amount he's spent so far hasn't even put a dent in the amount of money he has been provided with.

News @ 2007-08-08

At a recent LinuxWorld conference, Dell CTO Kevin Kettler encouraged the use of Linux for virtualization. Three thousand of Dell's own servers run Linux, including its so-called mission-critical applications, such as the company's internal employee, supply chain and financial-management systems, Kettler said. According to Kettler, "to encourage use of Linux for virtual environments is to make an easier way to do virtual machines."

To learn more about Dell and their passion for Linux, go to www.dell.com/linux

News @ 2007-08-01

I just finished adding an atom syndication to the site! You can click the orange syndication icon in the top right if you are using a standards compliant browser, or if you are using internet explorer, you can find the feed here: http://www.rdmnetworks.com/atom.xml. Atom is an IETF standard for xml feeds, and should be supported in any modern news feed reader.

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_%28standard%29 for more information on the atom standard.

News @ 2007-07-31

Sun Microsystems has announced a new project called "Project Indiana". This project aims to model Sun's next version of Open Solaris after Linux in an effort to promote open source software, and bridge the familiarity gap between Linux users and Solaris users.

News @ 2007-07-23

In yet another distrubutor agreement between microsoft and an open source company, the new Linsipre agreement forces all Linsipre users to forego all rights granted to them by the GPL! Luckily, other companies such as Red Hat have given the thumbs down to microsoft.

News @ 2007-07-13

Compiz and Beryl have finally merged their code base, and has re-named the project "compiz fusion". This is yet another step towards ensuring the quality of the Linux composited desktop that has made a convert of so many. Check out opencompositing.org for more information.