US Census - NOT ONLINE

http://www.us-cert.gov/current/index.html#u_s_census_bureau_2010

Please follow the link above to view the official notice from the US Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team.

At the time of writing, the US Census Bureau website is offline and does not appear in DNS lookups... and in the space of five minutes, it is back online. Curious, to say the least! It also looks like NTT is experiencing abnormally high peering latency outbound to Sprint and inbound from Verizon (InternetPulse).

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)

Web Browsers

I am reposting a US-CERT Cybersecurity Tip that defines web browsers, hoping to give users the advantage of understanding their systems in order to better protect themselves online.

Please view the original article.

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)

Wolfram|Alpha

Wolfram|Alpha

It is the computational knowledge engine, released in the Summer of 2009 by Wolfram Research, makers of Mathematica and maintainers of the MathWorld reference library. I followed the project loosely from buzz to release. It was rumored to be a Google rival, also having strong mathematical underpinnings. While it may take some traffic from Google, Wolfram|Alpha was not designed to be a direct competitor - it is not concerned with searching the web.

Wolfram|Alpha is made up of very high-end supercomputing clusters, running various derivatives of their Mathematica software for the web and for supercomputing, and a mind-boggling number of statistical and other reference material that is structured in such a way that the software can compute a result for your query.

The data that they use is peer-reviewed and accurate, and beyond retrieving statistics and displaying trends (such as rainfall patterns or economic prosperity for a given region), Wolfram|Alpha can actually compute your query, if it concerns mathematics, science, or engineering. Check out the example queries to get a feel for what it can do in each subject area.

Read about it and start computing! Think twice next time you need some numbers for a report - try Wolfram|Alpha first - you may be pleasantly surprised!

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)

Operating Systems (from US-CERT)

I just received an email on the general security tips mailer from the US Computer Emergency Readiness Team that describes operating systems in general, and then with examples of the most popular consumer operating systems on the market.

Check out tip ST04-021 now.

The US-CERT mailing lists are very informative, including these tips, as well as Cybersecurity threats and remedies.

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)

Followup on Moodle

The Moodle project, in which I participated this past semester, was a success, though not complete.

The reality is that, in Open Source, each contribution, though perhaps partial, helps the community at large. It is important that each code, technical, or design contribution be accompanied by appropriate documentation that explains its foundations and motivation, as well as sufficient technical documentation as to its specific functioning. Our project included just that, a 25-page report detailing our preliminary efforts, the tools we used, our end product, its flaws, and advice for improvements.

More specifically, we completed a fairly complete DB2 interface to echo those of MySQL, PostgreSQL and others already supported in the 1.9.x database scheme (the v2.0 scheme is different). We also completed some preliminary testing that helped us to further complete our implementation. The next team to take on this project will have their work cut out for them to guarantee that Moodle works fully on DB2.

Please drop any questions in the comment area below. Thanks!

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)