July 3, 2011
Installed Fedora 15

Despite all the efforts to make Fedora 15 easier and more user friendly, making power users kind of unhappy by removing functionality and features, it doesn’t look ready yet (please, remove more features! :D).

I installed Fedora 15 and it’s running in Gnome fall back mode (no hw acceleration here, so it’s OK). First thing I tried was updating my system: Applications > System Tools > Software Update; and it didn’t work. The error about a failing transaction was quite cryptic to me, and I didn’t know how to fix it (I tried to update several times but it didn’t work).

Running yum from a console works as expected, though. Fortunately nobody thought that yum had to be removed because some weird reason!

This is my first experience with Gnome fall back mode, and it feels less crippled than the regular Gnome interface. Too bad the drag-to-maximize thing doesn’t work in fall back mode.

April 27, 2011
77 Million Accounts Stolen From Playstation Network

More information at PSN blog: Update on PlayStation Network and Qriocity.

I don’t know how I would feel if I had a PSN account, with personal details, billing and credit card information, but I wouldn’t be happy. Not at all.

The thing is that I trust a couple of providers that currently have more or less all this kind of information (I don’t think I have provided personal details to the same people that have my credit card information, but nevermind). So it could happen to me. It’s scary.

Could this happen to you? If your answer is no, think again.

March 20, 2011
"A human error caused some sensitive server configuration information to be exposed this morning. Our technicians took immediate measures to protect from any issues that may come as a result."

From Tumblr staff blog, although you can find more information about this human error: Security hole spotted in Tumblr (I know, I know, but you must admit it’s funny they treat a human error as security hole).

Some sensitive souls are wondering if it’s OK to disclose that kind of information once one finds the problem, and this comment has a good point about it:

If someone’s fly is unzipped, I’d point it out because that’s the sort of accident that can happen to even the most competent and discerning.

If someone’s pants are sagged around their knees, I expect them to have noticed this themselves, and by walking around in public they’ve accepted the possibility of ridicule.

Yes, I would say that’s a pants down kind of issue.

And then some people start blaming PHP, while the truth is more simple and mundane: someone mistyped the opening PHP tag, and this code went live. That’s all.

Btw, I hope you’re not using a valuable password in your Tumblr. I’m not talking about mistyped tags but about not providing SSL access when you’re logged in the platform.

December 14, 2010
"Let’s say you have good old traditional username and passwords on 50 different websites. That’s 50 different programmers who all have different ideas of how your password should be stored. I hope for your sake you used a different (and extremely secure) password on every single one of those websites. Because statistically speaking, you’re screwed."

Agreed.

From The Dirty Truth About Web Passwords. It’s just common sense, but I like it.

April 17, 2010
Wrong Marketing
Really? Do you think calling your readers idiot will help you sell your book?
Great marketing strategy!

Wrong Marketing

Really? Do you think calling your readers idiot will help you sell your book?

Great marketing strategy!

January 20, 2010
We are experiencing an outage due to an extremely high number of whales.  Our on-call team is working on a fix.
When twitter is broken, you can’t say it on twitter (AKA in space, nobody can hear you scream).

We are experiencing an outage due to an extremely high number of whales. Our on-call team is working on a fix.

When twitter is broken, you can’t say it on twitter (AKA in space, nobody can hear you scream).

by jjm on 12:31pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZPorZyKXCEk
(View comments
Filed under: twitter whale fail scalable 
December 9, 2009
Red Hat Virtual Experience 2009

I registered some time ago, and today I can’t enter the event: where’s the login page?

I can’t even find a link to login in the event page, just the registration page and some general information, and the technical support e-mail provided seems redirected to /dev/null (well, I can’t be sure of this, please allow me the poetical license).

I’m busy and probably I can’t attend all the event, but man… at least I would have liked to try to.

Update: the link appears only when the event goes live (sic).

Final update: very interesting (virtual) event. Congratulations Red Hat.

June 7, 2009
Wondering About Pulseaudio and Ubuntu

Yesterday I upgraded to Ubuntu Jaunty, and I’m suffering (again!) sound problems with Pulseaudio. This is frustraing, at best, because I needed some time to research and fix the same problem with Intrepid (previous release).

Now seems the fix I used for Intrepid (tweaking damon.conf file to have my laptop play music without annoying noises) isn’t working with Jaunty, so I must start researching again (or don’t listen to music… or uninstall the damn Pulseaudio thing).

I’ve used Pulseaudio features since it worked 100%, I like the idea behind it, but I think it’s a very big issue that Ubuntu fails on sound every release because of this.

Dear Ubuntu fellas: please, don’t make it default until it works out of the box on most hardware out there.

Update: there’s a bug report.

by jjm on 11:35am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZPorZy77Og_
(View comments
Filed under: Ubuntu Sound Jaunty Pulseaudio Fail