//burnz.blog

A Harvard University dropout who ushered in the home computer age and made billions of dollars along the way will have his last official day of work at Microsoft on June 27, 2008.

Three people will essentially fill the void left behind when Bill Gates retires from the company he and friend Paul Allen co-founded in 1975.

Since Gate’s begin his transition from leading Microsoft to heading his personal-bankrolled charity, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, his job as Chied Software Architect has been handled by Ray Ozzie.

Craig Mundie inherited Gate’s Chief Research and Strategy Officer duties, while former Harvard classmate Steve Ballmer become Chief Executive Officer at the Seattle-based software colossus.

Gates left Harvard after two years to found the firm that become global powerhouse Microsoft. He later received honorary degrees from Harvard and other universities.

After retiring, Gates will remain chairman of the Microsoft board of directors and its largest shareholder.

“I don’t think anything is going to drastically change the day he leaves,” said Matt Rosoff of the private analyst firm Directions On Microsoft.

“If he thinks something is important and tells Steve Ballmer, Ballmer will listen to him.”

Still, Gates’s bespectacled nerdish visage is an integral part of Microsoft’s image and his departure is symbolic, according to analysts.

“The challenge Microsoft has when the founder departs is remembering its heart,” said analyst Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group in Silicon Valley.

“At some point the firm has to take the essence of what make Bill Gates successful and make surethat is preserved. Whether it is a company or a person, once you’ve lost your heart there isn’t much left but a shell” - AFP

Dual-booting with Ubuntu and Windows sometimes giving a problem with date and time in Ubuntu. This is a well-established problem when dual-booting, since Linux assumes the hardware clock represents UTC, whereas Windows assumes the hardware clock represents local time. Luckily Linux provides ways to change this to fix it.

If you go into your clock settings, I think you can select between setting the hardware as either UTC or local time. Try switching that, and then adjust the time and see if it “sticks.”

If not, you can do this via the commandline in Linux :-

1. In Linux, set the date and time to what it currently is. For example if it’s 10:20am local time:

   user@server:~$ sudo date -s 10:20

2. Then update the hardware clock accordingly, and force this to be considered “localtime”:

   user@server:~$ sudo /sbin/hwclock --systohc --localtime

3. Check to make sure it looks right:

   user@server:~$ sudo /sbin/hwclock --localtime

4. Sync between hardware clock and system clock:

   user@server:~$ sudo /sbin/hwclock --hctosys --localtime

Now Linux should consider the clock to be “localtime”, which should be identical to what Windows is doing. So after rebooting into Windows, the time should look right.

Hope that helps.

Mozilla’s Firefox 3 release event yesterday was an epic success. The servers logged over 8 million downloads during the 24-hour download day, and Mozilla has declared victory after exceeding its initial goal of 5 million downloads.

The rapid pace at which the downloads are occurring makes it difficult to compute an exact total. The counter appears to be lagging behind the actual count, and Mozilla’s statisticians say that the number could be as high as 3 million just four hours after Firefox’s official launch. Users can follow along at home by watching the counter at the official site.

Firefox 3 downloads have already exceeded the total number of downloads that took place in the first 24 hours after the Firefox 2 release. This is a significant milestone for Mozilla, which hopes that Firefox 3 will set the world record for the most software downloaded in a 24-hour period.

The display shows a breakdown by country, which indicates that the highest number of downloads is coming from the United States, followed by Germany and Spain. The US alone has reached over half a million downloads.

[ Spread Firefox | Download Day 2008 ]

Whenever we’re asked “when is Firefox going to be released” we endeavor to answer to the best of our abilities, but the truth of the matter is that we’ll only ever ship “when it’s ready”. We have a lot of indicators that help us understand when the product is ready for release: feedback from our pre-release milestones, excitement in the community and the press, availability of compatible Add-Ons, and a large active beta community helping us ensure that the release is compatible with all the various sites on the Internet.

After more than 34 months of active development, and with the contributions of thousands, we’re proud to announce that we’re ready. It is our expectation to ship Firefox 3 this upcoming Tuesday, June 17th. Put on your party hats and get ready to download Firefox 3 — the best web browser, period.

[ Source: Mozilla Developer News ]

The Firefox community is always up to some cool, collaborative way to declare their passion for Firefox. What better way to do this than band together to set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours?!

With your help the Firefox community can go down in history! If you have any questions or ideas please drop us a line at worldrecord @ mozilla.com.

[ Source: The Mozilla Blog | Download Day Headquarters ]

It is possible to create a “reverse” SSH Tunnel. The reverse tunnel will allow you to create an SSH Tunnel from your work computer to your home computer, for example, and then login to your work machine from your home machine even if your work firewall does not permit ssh traffic initiated from your home machine!

For this to work, an SSH Server must be installed on your work and home computer, and ssh (TCP port 22) must be allowed outbound from your work computer to your home computer.

Syntax: ssh -R remote_port:localhost:22 your_home_computer

At home, you would then run ssh -p 2048 localhost to log into your work computer via ssh.

Here is a script that you can run through the cron facility on your work system to make sure the reverse SSH Tunnel to your home system is up and running. It is useful in case the system is rebooted.

#!/bin/sh

# $REMOTE_HOST is the name of the remote system
REMOTE_HOST=remote.system.ip

# $REMOTE_PORT is the remote port number that will be used to tunnel
# back to this system
REMOTE_PORT=5000

# $COMMAND is the command used to create the reverse ssh tunnel
COMMAND=”ssh -q -N -R $REMOTE_PORT:localhost:22 $REMOTE_HOST”

# Is the tunnel up? Perform two tests:

# 1. Check for relevant process ($COMMAND)
pgrep -f -x “$COMMAND” > /dev/null 2>&1 || $COMMAND

# 2. Test tunnel by looking at “netstat” output on $REMOTE_HOST
ssh $REMOTE_HOST netstat -an | egrep “tcp.*:$REMOTE_PORT.*LISTEN” \
> /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -ne 0 ] ; then
pkill -f -x “$COMMAND”
$COMMAND
fi

SSH Tunnelling is an excellent way to tunnel insecure protocols through a secure communication channel. In this example, I’ll tunnel POP3 traffic using SSH. Traditional POP3 traffic, including username and password information, travels clear-text across the network.

The syntax: ssh -f -N -L <local port>:<remote server>:<remote port> <userid>@<remote server>

To tunnel POP3 traffic using ssh:

1. Make sure an ssh client is installed on your machine and an ssh server is installed on the POP3 server.
2. Create a local SSH Tunnel on your machine (port 1234 for this example) to the POP3 server’s port 110. You will need to be the root user to bind to “privileged” ports (< 1024).
   # ssh -f -N -L 1234:localhost:110 user@POP3_server
3. Test the tunnel.
   $ telnet localhost 1234
   You should see the POP3 server’s banner information.est the tunnel.
4. Configure your mail client to access your mail via POP3 using mail server localhost and port 1234.

After installing Ubuntu 7.10 there is no splash screen displayed at startup nor at shutdown. I just get a ‘Signal Out of Range’ message from my monitor.

A program called usplash controls this process, so I looked into it’s configuration, the values were totally off for my monitor, which uses a resolution of 1280 x 800.

By default the file looks like:
$ sudo cat /etc/usplash.conf
# Usplash configuration file
xres=1280
yres=1024

I edited the file:
$ sudo gedit /etc/usplash.conf

I changed the xres to: xres=1080 and the yres to: yres=800. Then I reconfigured the usplash program with the new settings.
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure usplash

Problem fixed, now the splash image displays both at startup and shutdown.

You can determine which versions of the ssh protocol an ssh server supports by examining the service banner. The service banner includes both the remote protocol version and the remote software version.

Example:
telnet ssh_server 22

SSH-1.5-remote_software_version (supports ssh protocol 1 only)
SSH-1.99-remote_software_version (supports ssh protocols 1 and 2)
SSH-2.0-remote_software_version (supports ssh protocol 2 only)

ssh protocol 2:

1. Create a DSA or RSA key named foo. As of version 3.0 of the ssh.com server includes support for RSA keys.
$ cd ~/.ssh
$ ssh-keygen -t dsa -f foo

2. Convert the DSA or RSA key into “SECSH Public Key File Format,” the format used on an ssh.com server.
$ ssh-keygen -e -f foo > foo.pub

3. Copy the foo.pub file to the ssh.com server.
$ scp foo.pub user@ssh.com_host:.ssh2

If the remote server only allows ssh protocol 2, you may receive the following errors:

scp: warning: Executing scp1 compatibility.
scp: FATAL: Executing ssh1 in compatibility mode failed (Check that scp1 is in your PATH).
lost connection

Use sftp instead to transfer the key:

$ sftp user@ssh.com_host
put foo.pub .ssh2

4. Add the appropriate ~/.ssh2/authorization file entry in the ssh.com server.
$ ssh user@ssh.com_host ‘echo “key foo.pub” >> .ssh2/authorization’

5. Login to the ssh.com server using the foo identity.
$ ssh -o IdentityFile2=~/.ssh/foo user@ssh.com_host

ssh protocol 1:

1. Create an RSA1 key.
$ cd ~/.ssh
$ ssh-keygen -t rsa1

2. Append the ~/.ssh/identity.pub file to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on the ssh.com server.
$ cat ~/.ssh/identity.pub | ssh remote_server “cat - >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys”

Note: Any ssh.com server only allowing ssh protocol 1 should be upgraded, as usage of ssh protocol 1 itself is not recommended.

Web search engine giant Google is interested in setting up operations in Malaysia, citing the country’s technology infrastructure and strategic location, newspapers reported on Sunday. Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Google has started discussions with Malaysia’s Multimedia Development on establishing a base in the country.

“They want to make their presence felt in Malaysia. It will be a big boost for our ICT industry,” he told reporters after meeting Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Abdullah said Malaysia ranked as the top users of Google in Southeast Asia, which was another reason why it would make sense to use the country as a base for its operations. In Asia, Google has offices in China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan.