choosing a content distribution license

With the plethora of various licenses available for various types of content (writing, music, software, etc), it’s a highly daunting process to choose which one a creator or publisher wants to use. Connexions uses the Creative Commons Attribution License (v3.0). Some projects use the MIT or BSD license formats, others are public domain, some are [effectively] unlicensed. Open …
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a new website

I’ve had a domain sitting [basically] unused for several years, but have finally found a purpose. Along the lines of freshnews, I have launched an rss aggregator/launch service at datente.com. There are several categories of feeds (imperfectly broken-up, but it’s what makes sense to me) that display in quasi random order. And on the front …
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extended file attributes with ext[2|3|4]

Most Unix/Linux users, and – hopefully – all admins are familiar with the standard 9 bits of permissions typically supported on various *nix file systems: ——— rwxrwxrwx uuugggooo Where “u”, “g”, and “o” indicate “user”, “group”, and “other” while “rwx” indicates whether the item can be read, written, or executed. Also of note are file ownerships in …
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defaulting pxe boots with hpsa

I recently found a very helpful nugget with regards to OS Provisioning with HP’s Server Automation product. OS Prov is most typically done using PXE (or the similar bootp process). SA provides a PXE server that gives a boot menu to network-booted systems. That menu contains a variety of choices: linux, windows, winpe, etc. In …
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doing technical phone screens

Related to a previous post on career development, I thought it could be interesting to look at one approach to the technical screen that I have used over the past few years when interviewing candidates. for folks with no “real” experience yet, I ask them to rank themselves on a few key technologies on the …
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effective error messages

I had a recent conversation with an old classmate, and he stated that using asserts when programming Java is useless because an exception can generate more useful information. Exceptions are only “more useful” if you are a developer or perhaps supporting an application. When a bug report or support case needs to be created, supplying the “raw” …
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technical career development

Career development. Career path. Development opportunities. Taking your career to the next level. Terms and phrases we all hear and pretty much pass over in our day-to-day lives. Right up until we want to move to a new/better job or performance reviews roll around. But what do they mean, and how can you advance your …
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the ticket smash, raw metrics, and communication – how to have a successful support organization

When I worked at Opsware, and for a while after HP bought us, we used to try to have once- or twice-a-week meetings for each support group wherein we would bring our most difficult cases (with the difficulty being determined by the case owner), and have an opportunity for everyone on the team to ask questions, …
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bglug meeting – 17 september – topic: data center automation

The September meeting of the Bluegrass Linux User Group will be this Saturday, 17 Sep. We’ll be meeting at Collexion’s facilities in Lexington at 2:30p. I will be presenting on data center automation, specifically on HP’s Server Automation platform (the tool I use on my day job). Some [limited] history of HPSA is available on the Opsware …
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debugging authorized_keys and ssh

I saw an interesting question this morning on ServerFault, entitled “SSH Prompts for password even though private keys are available, presented to server and known to it”. when my user is not already connected to the server (first ssh connexion), it prompts for password even though privates keys are availiable (PuTTY + Pagent). After that …
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assessment and capacity analysis and planning for virtualization initiatives

Q: What would need to go into an assessment tool for a virtualization initiative? A: Typical factors may include: current CPU load per server what’s running on each server current hardware of each server expected percentage increase in usage OS usage – homogenous or heterogeneous new hardware or re-use current hardware storage needs vendor for …
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new connexions collection available

I have been working on my Connexions submissions again recently, and have a collection ready for use (it will be growing as time goes on): “Debugging and Supporting Software Systems” I realize there are some small typos in the current text, but I will be addressing that in a upcoming revision 🙂 I’d love to …
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lightsquared attacking gps manufacturers

The LightSquared situation keeps getting more interesting. InfoWorld has another story on them attacking GPS manufacturers for not being more careful about filtering adjacent frequency bands (per a DoD recommendation from 2008). LightSquared is at loggerheads with makers and users of GPS (Global Positioning System) over interference between the navigation system and its planned cellular LTE (Long-Term …
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the fcc decides to intervene on lightsquared

I’ve taken an interest in LightSquared recently. Today InfoWorld reports that the FCC “won’t allow LightSquared’s proposed mobile broadband service to interfere with GPS signals, even though the potential interference would be caused by GPS receivers picking up signals outside of their designated spectrum”. So, the devices are in error, but the FCC is going to prevent LightSquared from …
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why technical intricacies matter

I have been working on a upgrade for one of our customers for nearly a month. Last week we spent about two hours focused on one specific problem that had been rearing its ugly head on an exceedingly-frequent basis: one of the components of the application was routinely pitching OutOfMemory errors from the Java Virtual …
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