Archive for the 'Services' Category

CAcert, OpenSSL, Apache, SMTP, IMAP et al.

Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010

Just my own quick notes for SSL cert generation for use wit CAcert. Mostly just because too many instructions on the web run over many pages with thousands of words, … :-(

Generating the private key:

openssl genrsa -out key.key 2048

Generating the Certificate Signing Request, CSR:

openssl req -new -key key.key -subj /CN=example.com -out key.csr

The CSR is now provided to your signing authority, from which you get the resulting certificate, which you save to something like key.crt.

Some software require the key and the cert to resist in a single file, you can simple cat them together:

cat key.{key,crt} > key.pem

10 years since the burst of the .com bubble

Thursday, March 11th, 2010

Heise is running a story, reminding us on the ten years anniversary of the burst of the .com bubble. Where about ten years ago the stock value of overrated, mostly internet related companies became penny stock overnight.

I can not stop, but think we will soon see history repeating itself with all those web 2.0 companies, such as Facebook or Twitter. I mean how many millions, and billions are they pumping into them without any reasonable revenue, or just even revenue model in sight?

Sure, at last they can all go down the advertising road. But is there really enough space for them to grab a multi billion share of the ad-market? And 2020 we will be all living from advertising?

Somehow, I do not really see this adding up.

5 years and the wait is over

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Five years and the wait is finally over–Poker reduced the price to a tenths :-)

Embedded World vs. CeBIT

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

For years the German flagship IT trade-shows loose visitors. The Systems is now even history. And last year the Embedded World and CeBIT managers were as stupid to use the same date for the shows???

Our company used to visit the Embedded World as guests. We always where considering to exhibit there, as we did on Linux shows, or the CeBIT. For our start-up every year it became more likely to join the Embedded World, however all abruptly stopped last year when (IIRC) the Embedded World for the first time happened to be the same days as the CeBIT.

It is certainly bad enough to loose visitors to competing shows overseas, such as the Computex or CES. But how can those regressing shows steal each other’s exhibitors and visitors? In the same country, week.

I doubt we are a single incident here. Like us certainly many more have partners at the other show or would like, or have to exhibit on both. There should be at least some days gab between the shows, to make it possible for more to attend both shows. This would still allow foreigners to optimize their travel schedule and visit both in one go. Another, I think even better, option would be to have half a year between both shows. For example move the Embedded World to the autumn. To better match product cycle and product placements.

But on exactly the same days?

LLVM clang support in T2 SDE (Linux)

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

With T2 r35579, I just added the required build system, configuration and glue to let the T2 SDE (System Development Environment) utilize clang and clang++ as the default C and C++ compiler. And I just successfully compiled the first packages on a x86-64/T2/Linux test build:

-rw-r–r– 1 root root 3949 Feb 16 15:41 9-atop.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 21444 Feb 16 15:45 9-libelf.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 55854 Feb 16 15:45 9-fontconfig.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 3827 Feb 16 15:45 9-renderproto.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 34883 Feb 16 15:46 9-libxext.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 12765 Feb 16 15:46 9-libice.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 22070 Feb 16 15:46 9-libsm.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 31354 Feb 16 15:47 9-libxt.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 15357 Feb 16 15:47 9-libxmu.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 15243 Feb 16 15:47 9-libxpm.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 12157 Feb 16 15:48 9-libxrender.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 13854 Feb 16 15:48 9-libxft.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 13782 Feb 16 15:48 9-libxkbfile.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 135931 Feb 16 16:00 9-openssh.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 344112 Feb 16 16:05 9-openssl.log
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 17024 Feb 16 16:06 9-screen.log

The resulting ssh and screen even worked as expected (so far, anyway).

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ExactScan 2.9, high-speed^9

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

ExactCODE just released another major ExactScan product family update: the new version 2.9 brings vast improvements all over the App. Most notably are excessive image processing performance improvements. For weeks we did nothing else but revisit our algorithms and fine tuned line of code that stood out.

With years of solid foundation code at ExactCODE, ExactScan already was pretty solid. However, even we received reports about issues. So likewise, for months, we where tracking every single stability issue brought to our attention. All of this contributes to making the version 2.9 the most performing and stable release, ever.

It even comes with new, built-in scanner drivers. For example the new Avision D2 models are now all supported, e.g. the AV220D2+, AV320D2+, and various other (yet unreleased) models, even various other vendors.

Of course work continues on the next planed updated, 2.10. For this next, of course free, update we even have another major surprise for you. Stay tuned, it’s just some weeks of QA away.

Read more: ExactScan homepage

Darn, how I hate this GNU/auto* junk

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

Day, life could be so great:

!> ./configure: line 14867: syntax error near unexpected token `$SDL_VERSION,’
!> ./configure: line 14867: `AM_PATH_SDL($SDL_VERSION,’

Damnit.

To quote David S. Miller:

“whirrr, whirrr, whirrrrrrrrr…” :-)

That’s the sound my brain makes when I’m working on low-level sparc code.

Well, it’s also the sound my brain makes when I look at this macros, of macros of generated and M4 processed script fluff. Just that low-level OS, SPARC, etc. code is certainly more entertaining, educating than this useless piece of sh*t script.

Update: And just because your compiler is accidentally not named “gcc”, or “cc”, you end up with gibberish like:

libtool –silent –mode=compile clang …
libtool: compile: unable to infer tagged configuration
libtool: compile: specify a tag with `–tag’

Why is the Apple iPad that affordable?

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

I only say: Subsidized, or near no margin for a “gold rush” thru content, App sales.

The Apple iPad

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Well, the iSlate name rumor sounded really strange. iTablet? Oh well. iPad indeed makes a little more sense.

However, honestly, the “iPad” is not really what I’ve been waiting for. Having one device for a job is so from the 90th - where several manufactures wanted to sell a device per job: one for calculation, one for phoning, one for your music, etc. pp. Obviously that did not turn out to be accepted too well. The iPhone was such as success because it combine so many required things in one device: phone, email, photo, web, music.

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sofortident.de

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Daily one encounters strange stuff on the web, or email. People try to get quick money by scamming you with pharmacy or other replicas (think Rolex) – from what I heard they often would not even deliver anything at all.

The other day I encountered a (Germany) site that wanted to verify the identify and age via an external service available at sofortident.de. I was cautious. A second look made me wonder even more: The first step requires to fill a form with name, address, age and the bank institute. I wondered what the heck they need the bank institute for. But the second form quickly enlightened me: Depending on the institute they then ask for your bank online account information, to (AS FAR AS I COULD FIND OUT) LOG INTO YOUR ONLINE BANK ACCOUNT and certainly parse out your birth date (or more) for verification.

To me this sounds like the worst thing to do on the internet: Telling some third party site your bank account information. Certainly they do not get the TAN (or other means of per-transaction authentication information). However, giving third parties any of my account data and let them mess with the system does not sound like the most sane idea to me either. And in the worst case some sloppy web coder accidentally left the input data in some log, or temporary file (or in some database intentionally). You’ll never know until it’s to late, the next scandal in your evening news broadcast.

Take care!