boklm's weblog

That roller coaster in Six Flags Great Adventure that will open this year seems to be quite tall :)
Some photos here, here, and here.

... use regex on google or other web search engines ? That would be usefull. Probably because it would take too much resources and is hard to optimise.

Today we've been to Crater Lake. Some photos. The weather was not very good so we don't really see the lake. There is still a lot of snow, and it's still very cold there :)

That's useless, but that's funny what they are doing with Xorg, and OpenGL on Luminocity. There are some awesome videos. There are also some interesting videos from Enlightenment. However this is funny, but a little useless, and I thing I will stay with ion, which has nothing like this, but is very fast to use, and doesn't require you to use the mouse :)

Today someone told me about Xen. I had heard of it (and even used it) a little some time ago, but didn't look in details at it. But now it seems very interesting. For now, on my server, I'm running Linux VServer, a patched linux kernel that allow you to run different linux distributions at the same time, on a single computer. The patch actually only add a few things like "security contexts", then we run each linux distribution in a chroot, in a different security context. This mean that each instance is almost as fast as if it was running directly on the machine (and actually it is). The problem is that each instance is using the same linux kernel, so this is probably not as secure as a system running a different kernel for each instance. And it can also be a problem if you want customs kernels for each instance. Xen seems to be very fast too, doing this in an interesting way (and I see they plan to use the hardware support AMD and Intel recently announced). So I'll have to try Xen, and see if I can use it to replace linux vserver on my server. This would also maybe allow me to have an OpenBSD or FreeBSD running on the same computer.
What I like with virtualization is that it's easy to keep a backup of a running system and restore it easily on a different computer.

An other 'independant' study claiming that Windows is more secure than Linux was previewed at the RSA conference in Febuary. Now we learn that Microsoft was funding the project all along. That probably explains why this study like the others only give numbers than means nothing, always in favor of MS Windows ... And Mark J Cox from RedHat doesn't agree with their numbers.

...

On the road between Grants Pass and Portland :



Entering Washington :



Entering Seattle :



The next day, going to Redmond, we saw this car, probably a KDE fan :



Then we found the Microsoft Campus, and took a few photos. Ooops, I had a Linux Tea Shirt :



And a "Powered By Linux" Cap :



Then we came back to Seattle :











We decided to go to the top of the Bank Of America Tower (the tallest one in Seattle) :

















We've been to the east of Seattle, and came back when it was the beginning of the night :







The next day it was raining in Seattle, so we decided to go to Portland :

Large enterprises should not use Linux because it is not secure enough, has scalability problems and could fork into many different flavours, according to the Agility Alliance, which includes IT heavyweights EDS, Fuji Xerox, Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Dell and EMC.
Agility Alliance, a bunch of losers to Linux :)

Tomorrow morning I'll drive to Seattle. And I'll come back on Sunday...
That's cool, I've never been to Seattle or Portland yet. And I like travelling.

Yesterday morning I didn't know what to do. I took my map, and saw something called "lava beds national monuments". After looking on google, that looked good so I decided to go.



I took the I5 to Ashland.







then the 66 that goes from Ashland to Klamath Falls (but I turned before Klamath Falls) which is a beautiful road in the forest.



Then on the 161.











Then entering Lava Beds



















A small trail I can take maybe an other day.





Entering the Modoc National Forest.



"rought road ahead"



That was a small road, and I wasn't sure where it was going ...







So I decided to come back. But I saw later (when I found a map) that it was actually the road I wanted to take, but it was too late. I'll have to come back an other day.











It was almost night.









Lava Beds is definitivly a nice place. Very good for hiking, and camping. And it's also possible to visit some caves (but I wouldn't do it alone) ...

What I don't like in real life shops is the stupid salesmen that come to you, and ask if he can "help you". Actually the only thing he wants to help you do is spend as much money as you can, and buy today what you wanted to buy later. Even worse, sometimes he or she can pretend to be like a friend and give you "personnal suggestions" on what is best. Deciding what to buy alone or with someone who's job is not to sell you something is often a lot better.
Now the same thing can happen on the web. I was looking for an ssl certificate on instantssl.com (I need to buy a new one for the company where I am working, and I'm looking for something cheaper than verisign, because paying more than $300 a year for a small file only because they give enough money to Microsoft to have their certificate trusted by Internet Explorer is really stupid). Their cheapest certificate is $49, that's a lot cheaper than verisign, but still very expensive for something that cost them about $0.000000001 or less. I had loaded this website and was doing something else when a web based chat window openned, with someone asking if I need some help. She then explained why I should take the Premium SSL or Pro SSL which offer more warranty and come with a free Trust Logo (that most people probably won't understand, and has no use except a free link to their website). What she said to convince me to take the most expensive ones was so stupid that I wonder why there are people spending so much money on that. But unfortunatly, a lot of people think that if they pay more, it will be more secure, even if they don't understand anything about what they are actually buying ... Now even on the web you can be bothered by salesmen who want you to spend as much money as possible. But at least, it's easy to close the window :)
So now I'm looking for an other way to have a certificate without beeing ripped off by one of thoses companies whose only expense is the marketing and the bills to Microsoft to be trusted by Internet Explorer. But I'm not sure if is possible now.
CAcert (described in this article) is interesting, but will probably never be trusted by default with most browsers, even if it's as secure as most others trusted CAs (which are actually often not very difficult to cheat, as we saw when VeriSign, Inc. issued two certificates to an individual fraudulently claiming to be an employee of Microsoft Corporation).

Some photos I took today on a small road on Onion mtn.




























And some photos from last weekend, in Carmel, San Jose :



When I arrived in San Francisco, I stopped a little to take this photo.



Hmm, they don't seem to like France :)













And the next day I came back by the 101, that was a little long :)

EU Software Patent Directive Adopted. This is the new european democracy where the big companies make the laws. You aldready pay Microsoft a few hundreds of dollars when you buy a new computer, soon you'll also have to pay them for any program you want to use, whoever wrote it.